by craig on Wed Nov 04, 2015 9:11 am
The sailmaker apparently changed the pattern sometime in the last year. I've noticed the newer boats have three sail ties now.
I am extremely conservative when reefing because I find that my boat is way overpowered even in light winds. I'm not sure if it's because of my home-made sails (I may have cut them too "full"), or not enough ballast, or just because of the gusty wind conditions on the lake. I'm generally reefing if the wind is 7 knots or above, and a second reef if above 12 knots or so. I realize that's very much against what other people have experienced, but I'm telling you my boat doesn't need more sail area than that. I also like to furl the jib as a first reef point, although that certainly gives you a lot more weather helm and you can't point as well or go as fast. The one thing that didn't work well for me was using the jib with one reef point when I should have used two. To keep the boat on its feet, I kept spilling the air from the mainsail, which caused it to have excessive lee helm. I didn't realize what was happening at the time, but with experience I realize that I should have either furled the jib or further reefed the main. If it had been fully reefed, I wouldn't have had to spill as much air, and the center of effort would have stayed farther back where it belonged. Now I don't have any problems with lee helm. (The other trick is to not fully trim the jib when tacking. Build up speed, then trim jib to where it should be).
Dana: after tying up the reef points, you can also shove the extra sail material between the outhaul line and the boom to keep it from flapping. That's what I did.
Titania, launched January 2015