Reefing Sails

Reefing Sails

I am for the most part a fair weather sailor. I like a nice steady wind, but when the wind is up and it is gusty it fast gets out of my comfort zone. When there is a strong and gusty wind I do not go out. If I am out I can reduce the amount of sail by reefing it and make the boat easier to sail and safer to sail. Having too much sail up is asking for problems and equipment failure.

When the wind gets stronger you have two choices. You can take down the large sail and replace it with a smaller sail or you can shorten the sail that is up by reefing the sail. 

Traditionally, mainsails have one or two rows of grommets across the sail that are parallel to the boom. A heavy duty re-enforced grommet call a cringle is at both the luff side of the sail (mast side of the sail) and the leech side of the sail (the side of the sail away from the mast). To reef the sail, the sail is lowered till the cringle of the reef line is at the boom level. A line is run through the cringle, under the boom to and through the next grommet, then under the boom to the next grommet, and this is done till you get to the other cringle. This ties the bottom of the sail to the boom and shortens the sail that is up. It is less work to reef the sail than to replace the sail. There are some things that you can do to make reefing a sail easier and quicker. One is try reefing a sail on a calm day to get see what is involved in doing it.

Most foresails or head sails also have reefing points. Today there are rolling booms that can let you have an infinite number of sail sizes by rolling the sail on to the boom. There are also other methods of boom furling setups called slab reefing and multi-line reefing systems that are now available. They all have advantages and disadvantages: some can be done single handedly but most need two or three people to use.

I try not to sail when I might have to shorten sails, but it is smart to know how to if the need comes up. Have fun and be safe sailing.