I have very little experience in sailing a sloop-rigged sailboat, outside of my own Pocketship. Hopefully some of you experienced hands will weigh in with your opinions. Up to now I've been leaving the jib unfurled and reefing the main as the wind gets up. I've been reefing very conservatively with a preference for less sail area because the boat is usually very lightly loaded, and the heel angle gets to be pretty steep. The problem is that the center of effort keeps moving forward. Is it better to first take in the jib as a first reef, and only then reef the mainsail? I tried this yesterday and it seemed to work well. There was a noticeable amount of weather helm with this setup, which makes sense.
I should do experiments to see how close I can get to the wind Jib vs No-Jib. With the jib, I'm able to do 52 degrees with decent speed close-hauled (by measuring my GPS tracks afterwards).