Reefing

[Bill Mac]

We are fairly new sailers. Not new to wooden boats as I just completed a 17' cedar lapstrake canoe (Walter Simmons plan/offsets). Purchased a 15'6" wood sloop built by Lowell's Boat Shop (1987) last fall and spent the winter preparing for this season. We have been out three times and have been "overpowered" by wind each time. There is no reefing capability on the main (164" luff, 98" foot). The "dory" style boat is a bit tender although it does have a centerboard. The winds have been approx 12-15 kts with some whitecaps. I don't want these conditions to stop our sailing. Would reefing help, and if so, can we do this ourselves as the sails are in good condition? As usual, thanks for any suggestions here.

[rbgarr]

This may be some help even though it is specific to Beetle Cat rigs: http://beetlecat.com/store/Scripts/openExtra.asp?extra=78

[Ian McColgin]

The hard part is sewing in the patches for the reef tack and clew and then either stitching or press-fitting a suitably robust grommet. There are a number of good canvass and sail books that cover this but you might be better off scaring up a local sail-maker to have it done.

There are some real tricks to getting a reef in such a small rig as you want to leave enough sail that it'll still work. This is where a good sailmaker can really help.

Many small boats can be sailed in more boisterous conditions if your abs are as firm as your nerve. You'd not want to add hiking straps but if the thwarts are well secured you can wrap ankles around, get mid-thigh on the gunnel and put some biomass to weather. You may want a hiking stick to keep a grip on the tiller.

Finally, you can often depower by letting the sail off for maybe even 30% luffing.

There can be a lot of tricks to sailing these wee traditional boats.

G'luck

[Thorne]

Can you give us a bit more to go on? When you say sloop, does that mean you have a main and a jib? If so, how big is the jib?

The advice to go to a sailmaker is good stuff. Buying Marino's book is also worth considering. I used it to put a set of reefpoints in my dory skiff's mainsail, but first I bought a smaller jib on eBay (although baconsails.com has a great selection).
http://www.woodenboatstore.com/images/300306S.JPG
http://www.woodenboatstore.com/Sailmakers-Apprentice/productinfo/300-306/

You want the reduced size of the smaller jib to match the reduced size of the reefed main -- that way you avoid having the serious lee helm that a full size jib and reefed main can create.

In my dory skiff I have enough weather helm that dropping the fullsize jib and sailing under main alone isn't an option. So I swap out the jib to the smaller one and can sail that way with a bit of weather helm, or reef the main and sail that way with a balanced helm. YMMV

Here she is with small jib and unreefed main -
http://www.luckhardt.com/elk_mesailingweb.jpg

You can see that the reef takes up a lot of the mainsail, but when reefed it results in a well-balanced rig when reaching with the small jib.