Ok folks, I went looking for some videos talking about reefing.
What I wanted to see was footage of people taking a reef in when it's howling, because on my boat which has a high boom and a very wide, open cockpit tidying up the reefed sail is difficult and bluntly hazardous. I'm not the world's tidiest sailor but it occurs to me that if it's howling windy you want your slabs tidied up nice and tight to avoid having a big bubble of sail just blow out and start flogging everywhere.

What I did find was a group of people advocating reefing off the wind, which is the opposite of what I was taught (RYA syllabus). This makes sense from a risk reduction perspective - no boom, sail, sheets flogging around but I cannot imagine trying to lash sail to my boom off wind in waves and a blow, it'd be bloody dangerous.

Thoughts and experiences please!

I can't see how it would be possible, let alone neat and tidy. If it's really howling, I might go beam on and let the main flog to enable getting enough foot tension, but to tie the reefing lines to the boom ... You'd have to come up on the wind once you got the foot and luff tight. You could do most of the tidying whilst still beam on, then bring it up onto the wind driving on the headsail and tie your bundle lines semi close hauled.

I remember running with a fully reefed main in 60-70 knots and 10m+ seas. The main wouldn't budge up or down due to pressure. Beam on or going into the wind was not an option for the sake of the boat, so we rode it out for a day and a couple of accidental gybes until the main ripped in half, alleviating the pressure to allow us to drop the main and run on storm jib only.

A 34t displacement hull ketch surfing at over 20 knots was a thing to behold!

DM

Downwind reefing is pretty simple but can be tough on gear. I pull the mainsheet in to try to get as much of the mainsheet as possible away from the rigging, and monitor the sail carefully as it goes over the spreaders.

Whether upwind reefing is a hassle depends on your setup to a large extent. It's much faster and easier IMHO to use a luff reefing line which means you just drop the halyard to the mark, pull down the luff reefing line and then pull in the leach reefing line - you don't have to fumble getting a flapping sail around a tack hook and then re-hoisting. Reefing takes less than a minute singlehanded on our fractional rig 36'er with Harken luff cars, and that's using the cunningham as a luff reefing line rather than having a dedicated reef line.

One problem with downwind reefing is reaching the aft end of the reefed portion of the sail, but if you have a stack pack mainsail cover the reefed section sits quietly inside the cover. Otherwise using a single line run through each reefing eyelet seems to be faster for me than using a bunch of them in the old-fashioned way; you can reach up, stab the end of the line through the eyelet, and then crouch down away from the boom while pulling the line taut and moving to the next eyelet, rather than standing near the boom all the time. If the boom is bouncing excessively while you're bundling up the sail then something is going wrong somewhere else.

It's pretty easy with lazy jacks, battened main and mainsail luff cars.
Soak down a bit. Set traveller to put the boom over port/starboard quarter. Ease mainsheet a bit to take the pressure off.
Drop the halyard, attach the reefing tack line, tension halyard. Grind in the reef line.
Take up mainsheet and ease traveller.
All done.

It was the mainsail cars that made the difference. If I got overwhelmed single handed, you could just soak down and dump the halyard. The main would be down in seconds. I couldn't do that with a bolt rope or slugs.

Edit: Chris reminded me of something. Dick around with headsail/kite trim to narrow the slot and put wind behind the main, it helps keep the main off the spreaders.

Ok we went out in a nice 8 knots today, all of a sudden lots of white horses behind us and a 20 knot seabreeze was in.

I went to the mast, kicked up the clutch on the way and pulled 2 reefs in, sheeted the main in to bring the boom inboard while I got sail ties in and reefing line in.

Only had to get the helmsman to head up a couple of times to take the pressure off.

No noise, no stress, no boom swinging all over the place.

Really pleased I heard about this, and had your feedback before trying it.

a general comment on reefing (upwind or down) that some folk don't know, is to use your topping lift to raise the boom to near the leach reef eyelet

then take up the slack on the reef line

avoids overstressing the gear dragging the sail down to the boom

cheers,

No topper, race boat.

Every time I reef I think of the poor bastards doing it 100 feet up, out on the yards.

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JonE said..
Ok we went out in a nice 8 knots today, all of a sudden lots of white horses behind us and a 20 knot seabreeze was in.

I went to the mast, kicked up the clutch on the way and pulled 2 reefs in, sheeted the main in to bring the boom inboard while I got sail ties in and reefing line in.

Only had to get the helmsman to head up a couple of times to take the pressure off.

No noise, no stress, no boom swinging all over the place.

Really pleased I heard about this, and had your feedback before trying it.

Hiya JohnE,
You made me curious now as to what others do. Question for you, do you have your first reef line run before leaving the dock? When shorthanded, well to be honest pretty much all the time, my first reef line was run and tied off to the boom. Ie: when hoisting you ned to have the reef line out of the clutch and free running.
If we were facing any dodgy forecast, the second reef was also put in at the dock. I never ran the third reef as we never got winds bad enough to need it.
I had to do it this way as when under sail, the boom end ended up way too high to connect a reef without sending someone out on the boom or dropping it, neither of which are a good idea in a seaway.

Do you normally have your reefs run before going out?
I'd be interested to hear what everyone else does!

Yeah - the "how many reefs do I reeve?" problem.

I often would reeve the first leech reef but never did the second - too much rope flopping around offended me. I used to think of running a little mouseline which would have been better. Ultimate would be a little pocket on the leech secured with velcro. Leave the mouse in all the time and when needed rip it out of the velcro and haul away. I haven't thought about ending the mouseline properly, it would need to tied off at the forward end of the boom at both ends.

On the few times we used the second reef- we were already on the first reef when we started (so it was like putting in the first reef) or we started out with it.

Maybe we would be better with stainless rings with clam cleats just near the full batten pocket. When you want a reef in you haul up the reef line to the ring, which then cleats or clips , through the full batten, onto the luff and back down the mast. It means you have a little extra spectra near the mast which would not make me as grumpy. Someone has probably done this somewhere - I haven;t needed to think about it much. cheers

Phil

Shaggy to answer your question, if I'm single-handed I always go out super-conservative pre-reefed at 2nd of three, and if it gets above 20 knots I'm ready to pull it down and motor home. Or downwind jib only.

this is in port phillip, and i have only one reef line rigged. The tack end is webbing with a stainless loop either side to the rams horns so a trip to the mast always.

I have a spare sheave in the boom and a length of ideal rope, and a spare clutch, so I think prior to sailing out of the heads I will fish a second reefing line and prior to heading out, always have 2 ready to go.

My boom has integral 22mm track along the top. What I would really like is 2 heavy duty cars on the boom to run the reefs through, but thats going to be a thousand bucks so....

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shaggybaxter said..
I'd be interested to hear what everyone else does!

3 setup ready to use all the time.

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cammd said..

shaggybaxter said..
I'd be interested to hear what everyone else does!

3 setup ready to use all the time.

Same, SNSW coast

Boom strut, stackpack, lazyjacks, 2 reefs always organised with lines to the rear of the cabin top. Always singlehanded. Never leave the cockpit. Aries drives the boat. Reefing is quick and easy.

FWIW, first 2 reefs always rigged. Two line reefing - leech lines led back to jammers at cockpit, and two luff downhaul lines back to jammers at cockpit, But have to go to the mast for luff downhaul to hook up whichever line is next. Have both genoa and staysail on furlers. If wind gets beyond 2 reefs in main, then drop main and sail on staysail. Have sailed downwind in mid twenties gusting low thirties with two reefs in main and partly furled genoa (staysail furler wasn't working properly at the time). Probably at the limit of what's sensible, but as apparent wind reduced by boat speed, got away with it. Another time, have made better than 6 knots boat speed reaching on staysail only in mid twenties breeze.

Hey Seabreeze,
Can you chaps remove the ridiculous cap on the number of posts you can like in a 24 hr period?
There is some great responses here that I'd like to acknowledge, but you can only like 2 or 3 posts before you get capped for 24 hours.
SB can do with a few more contributors, so anything that encourages good dialogue is a good thing, no?
Seems silly and I don't know what purpose the limit actually serves.
Cheers!

Got a bit caught out returning from Ballina a couple of weeks ago, had the boat mostly de rigged on the slip, it was a steam home but a northerly kicked in with about 8 miles to go, so of course the sails went up, the breeze continued to build, no reefs run crossed the bar with the main scandalized, not ideal but got us back

RE: Reefing Downwind
I don't like reefing downwind.
With the sails pressed against the shrouds or spreaders there is too much resistance to dropping the sail to the reef points.
You would have to go to the mast and physically pull the main down.

I usually point up or heave to as a matter of safety and ease on the rigging.
Some boats can't be reefed downwind.
gary

The main on Kinora is quite small and only has 2 reefing points. The leech and luff reefing lines come back to clutches on the cabin roof, 6 either side for halyards, topping lift, cunningham etc, that I can reach from the cockpit. Also 2 x Harken self-tailing winches aft of the clutches. Lazy-jacks, a stack-pack and a Raymarine ST2000+ tiller pilot. Headsail is a No. 2 genoa on a Profurl C320. Most of my sailing is single handed.

The idea was that most sail operations could be done from the cockpit and it works although I haven't tried reefing while downwind in fresh conditions. The inspiration came from reading these forums and from the setup on Ramona's Currawong.

Cheers,
Kinora

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garymalmgren said..
RE: Reefing Downwind
I don't like reefing downwind.
With the sails pressed against the shrouds or spreaders there is too much resistance to dropping the sail to the reef points.
You would have to go to the mast and physically pull the main down.

I usually point up or heave to as a matter of safety and ease on the rigging.
Some boats can't be reefed downwind.
gary

I found that there's a nice amount of resistance. If it gets too much, you just head up momentarily.
20 knots breeze minus the 7-8 knots we were doing through the water was a comfortable 12-15 apparent. If we'd headed up to windward and put a couple of knots headway in with the motor that would have been almost double the windspeed, four times the pressure.

Anyway, i just wanted to report back that having tried it in 20 knots, it works well.

The caveat is that we were 2-up with a good guy (former aviator) at the wheel. I'm not sure I'd trust my auto-pilot not to gybe in 20 knots with wind at 150 true.

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shaggybaxter said..
Hey Seabreeze,
Can you chaps remove the ridiculous cap on the number of posts you can like in a 24 hr period?
There is some great responses here that I'd like to acknowledge, but you can only like 2 or 3 posts before you get capped for 24 hours.
SB can do with a few more contributors, so anything that encourages good dialogue is a good thing, no?
Seems silly and I don't know what purpose the limit actually serves.
Cheers!

SB has stopped me putting video links up had some beauties on the Sydney Hobart.

Scroll down, contact support/help.

My current boat, the 5th, the oldest, slowest so far is a 33 footer, the first with most lines adjusted from the mast, rather than the cockpit. The worst I have been out in this boat is only low 30's with 2-3m swell with 2 reefs in.

The point of this post is I really like working from the mast with the lighter line loads. Slab reefing is easy with all lines at hand and a trustworthy under deck autopilot.

Yay! Thanks Seabreeze, I can now like more than 3 posts!
Good on you team!

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garymalmgren said..
RE: Reefing Downwind
I don't like reefing downwind.
With the sails pressed against the shrouds or spreaders there is too much resistance to dropping the sail to the reef points.
You would have to go to the mast and physically pull the main down.

I usually point up or heave to as a matter of safety and ease on the rigging.
Some boats can't be reefed downwind.
gary

Nope, I don't have to go to the mast when reefing downwind - the reefing lines pull the sail down.

I'm not sure it's safer to point up since that means the main is normally flogging when reefing. The sail is dragged over the rigging while reefing downwind, but I can't see that as being worse than usual chafe over a longer term.

Oh, and we have two reefs inserted all the time, but our boats have lived for years at Batemans Bay and Port Stephens which both get all the wind going and a fair bit extra on top of that. With the full Harken roller bearing luff car system, reefing singlehanded takes less than a minute.

This seems like a good middle ground. Nicer than flogging directly upwind but a good way to spill wind from the main?

I gotta say, we shook a reef out with the carbon main on the weekend. It has a bolt rope and it took more effort than the dacron main that's on slugs.

Much more comfortable to keep the genoa and furl the mainsail sailing downwind in freshening conditions. As the wind continues to freshen, drop the main completely and then reduce the genoa.

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Ramona said..
Much more comfortable to keep the genoa and furl the mainsail sailing downwind in freshening conditions. As the wind continues to freshen, drop the main completely and then reduce the genoa.

Depends if your boat will surf. I tend to treat mine like a windsurfer - I want as much power as I can handle safely. If I can take off on a wave and beat 10 knots, I'm taking it.

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JonE said..

Ramona said..
Much more comfortable to keep the genoa and furl the mainsail sailing downwind in freshening conditions. As the wind continues to freshen, drop the main completely and then reduce the genoa.

Depends if your boat will surf. I tend to treat mine like a windsurfer - I want as much power as I can handle safely. If I can take off on a wave and beat 10 knots, I'm taking it.

True, but you need the sail area set well forward when sailing downwind. Furling that headsail on that NS 38 and keeping a full main sailing downwind in a freshening breeze is going to be hard work steering. It's obvious why they need a crew of 3. In my case I would reef the main, keep the No2 full size. Engage the Aries and read a book. Hull speed is fast enough.

I've always dropped the main and sailed under furled headsail downwind in strong conditions. Heavy displacement mono no expert. Are there advantages to furling the headsail and sailing under reefed main alone? Advantages worth having to deal with a preventer and gybing etc etc?