Hi, Andrei: Why don't you bring your boat here to Milwaukee (it's only about an hour or so away from Madison) and I'd be happy to go over all of this with you. We can look over your boat's reefing gear, make any needed adjustments, and then take her out to practice reefing and changing sails. If it's real rough we can stay inside Milwaukee harbor (which is plenty big itself), or otherwise we can practice outside in some waves. Let me know. Gordon '83 M-17 "Sapphire" On May 7, 2009, at 6:27 PM, Andrei Caldararu wrote:
Hello all,
I am wondering how do you go from sailing in light wind to heavy wind, on the water, single handed? Say I have my mainsail up with my 150% genoa, and the wind perks up. I would like to go to a one-point reef in the main, with the 100% jib in the front. What steps do I take?
More importantly perhaps, I seem to have quite a bit of hardware on the boom and mast that I don't know how to use: my boom has a small block at the aft end, a jam cleat about 10 inches forward of that, and another block 10 inches further forward. On the opposite side of the boom, about where the second block is, there is also an eye mounted. On the mast, below where the gooseneck enters, are two jam cleats. The sail has got three reeefing points (I assume that's what they are: lines that come out of the sail on both sides of it) in a line about 10 inches above the foot of the sail. How do I make use of all this?
In the past, if the wind was blowing hard when I left the dock, I put up my 100% jib, and I reefed the main by doing the following: I ran the cunningham line through the second eye in the luff of the mainsail, ran it through one of the jam cleats on the mast, and put a figure 8 knot in it. Then I tied the lines from the reefing points around the boom, and finally I ran the outhaul through the eye and the block on the mast, jury rigging something that did not seem right. How does one do it properly, and what knots are to be used? Finally, even in light winds, how does one attach the outhaul (I assume I somehow should use the block at the end of the boom).
Thanks,
Andrei.
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