Editor’s note: Coop submitted photographs to illustrate this article, but we had insufficient space to print them. To view them – or to tap into any of Coop’s formidable sailing expertise – contact him at coop.joecoopersailing@gmail.com.
This Corner discusses a maneuver that many sailors either do not do, dread doing, or do pretty ineffectually. The latter reason is the content of this Corner. At its core, it is a letter I sent to a Hood client many years ago. He was halfway across the South Pacific when his existing mainsail expired. We built a new mainsail for him, and this column is just a part of the correspondence with him.
I figure that over this summer many folks will find themselves needing to reef. I invite you to consider the ideas described here, make notes on your system, and review them in the fall with a view to making next season less stressful. For you lot preparing to push off for parts unknown, or already there, you might want to act sooner.
The object of the reefing exercise is of course to reduce sail area, on all points of sail and to do it in a way that the crew can execute quickly, in the dark, repeatedly – with the same results – and with a degree of safety they feel comfortable with. This of course varies widely with crew age, number of crew, boat type, experience, physical fitness, and so on.
Over the years there have been invented a variety of “systems” to reef mainsails, many aimed at making the dreaded act more palatable (or less unpalatable) for the less skilled and/or to line some enterprising fellow’s wallet. The results generally are not as good as grabbing the bull by the horns.
Successful reefing has the following stages:
1. Realizing the need to reef
2. Preparing the players and equipment
3. Lowering the halyard to the desired reef position
4. Securing the luff reef
5. Re-tensioning the halyard
6. Securing the leech reef
7. Tying in the reef points as deemed necessary
8. Ensuring that chafe is minimized at the leech and luff reef points
9. Re-trimming the sail
Doing this as quickly as possible is an advantage for all concerned. Before any line is rove, the particular methodology of reefing designed to meet the requirements of the boat and crew needs to be determined. There are of course several ways to achieve all this. I will review what I consider the “best” way for the Campbells to do it with the least ruckus, either in re-rigging the boat or additional actions in the process of reefing.
Courtesy of Yachting World
Let’s look at two boats: one an “Open” 40, a race boat, 40 feet LOA, formerly owned by a customer and mate of mine, one Mike Millard. This reefing system has done one circumnavigation and is now in the hands of a young lady from California is presently halfway through its second. Mike sailed this boat in several single- and doublehanded races on the Northeast coast of the U.S., sometimes with me as co-skipper. This arrangement works. The other is a J/105 optimized for doublehanded ocean racing.
On Mike’s boat there are two lines for each reef: a tack line and a leech line. The luff lines “dead end” at a pad eye on the mast, then reeve through the luff cringle, pass thru a second pad eye on the mast, down to the deck and so aft to clutches and a winch. The dead end of the leech end reefing line is, in the case of this boat, secured to a ring on a webbing strap around the carbon boom. This sail is made loose footed for the purpose. In the event that the mainsail is captive foot, we install a slit on the foot. In this latter case, the leech reefing line is led around the boom and tied off. I describe it as a bowline on a bight. Where and how the luff and leech lines lead aft is of secondary importance at the moment; suffice to know that they do.
In order to reef this boat, named Wild Eyes, I pick up the task at Point 3, above. The halyard has marks (magic marker ink type marks – one band for the first reef, two and three for succeeding reefs) on it at a point that makes sense to the operator. In Mike’s case there is a mark on the halyard just before the halyard enters into the clutch. So, he eases the halyard to that point and closes the clutch.
Next, he gathers in the slack from the luff reef line, so tensioning the luff of the sail. It is important to tension the luff first so that the intermediate slides are not strained, as they are if the clew is tensioned first, for universally such slides are not intended to be stressed. If they are, the sail will tear, regardless of the local reinforcement – the load will merely find the closest weak link. Once the luff cringle is tensioned, and set, he takes up the slack on the leech reef line. (In practice, there is a bit of cheating in this arrangement. As the lines go loose when the halyard is eased, he overhauls the lines through their respective closed clutches, thus minimizing, or at least reducing, the effect of having lots of loose line flapping around. This is a fine point nuance of the process, achieved after several practice goes. And yes, he does resemble a one-armed paper hanger in a hurricane, but it all has a point. Then the bunt of the sail can be secured (or not) according to conditions and temperament of the operators.
Now comes the bit you are rightly concerned about, Step 8 – CHAFE, defense against. A wise British sailor and author named Eric Hiscock once opined that “chafe is the enemy of the ocean sailor.” He is correct. There are a few ways to deal with chafe on reefing lines.
1. Use blocks instead of the cringles (aka pressed rings) to reeve the line through.
2. Use a back-up system that relieves the pressure on the real reefing line.
3. Move the reefing lines (any line underload in fact: halyards included, every hour or so. This is known and referred to by experienced ocean sailors of my acquaintance as “changing the nip.”
Pluses and minuses:
For all options, the use of thinner and stronger cordage, replacing what I am assuming is thicker; stretcher “simple polyester double braid” cordage is to be considered. Why? There is less drag where the lines render around the various blocks and corners. The cordage guys recommend an 8:1 ratio for sheave to cordage diameter, so if you have half inch line, you need a 4-inch sheave, ideally.
Using more stretch-resistant cordage will reduce the play of the reefing line in the sail, which causes chafe. Cordage such as Dyneema (Spectra) is especially good in chafe resistance – better than polyester. Using thinner lines makes it easier to install a backup system, in that there is more room in each cringle. And so on. OK more money but on the other hand less chafe on the reefing lines
Alternative two: Rig a backup.
This is basically an arrangement where the reefing line is used to pull the reef down and then a second system is used to hold the loads. Do not discount this as working only on a small “race” boat like a J/105 – the principle applies to any sized boat and I have used it myself on the J Class sloop Endeavour, putting a reef in the main that was 170 feet on the hoist by 50 feet on the foot.
You will know that a reef line is a down component and a back, aft, component. Sailing doublehanded on a J/105 in last year’s Marblehead to Halifax Ocean Race, I used sail ties to relieve the strain on the reefing line while I carried out some on the job modifications to said reefing line.
First, I made a loop out of a sail tie and connected the sail’s regular outhaul to the loop, which I had rove thru the reef cringle. Next, I tensioned the outhaul and of course the outhaul pulled the reef clew aft. I took another sail tie and lashed it around the boom through the reef clew cringle a few times and pulled as tight as I could.
I could then release the load on the reef line. If I’d wanted, I could’ve used the outhaul to apply more aft tension to the reef, to further flatten the sail, but that was not necessary. The reef line was thus not loaded at all, until we came to undo it all before shaking the reef out.
I could see a set up where you’d have several dedicated lines or loops. Three would be for the distance between the outhaul and the reef cringles in the sail. In this case each successive loop is longer. As the reefs get deeper, the distance between the outhaul and the leech reef cringle gets greater. Then there would be dedicated lashing lines that you would pass around the boom, through the cringle and around the boom again, say three times. This would hold the sail down to the boom. The outhaul could then be used to tension the aft component, keeping the sail flat, and the actual reefing line released and left as the backup in case something fails.
All this is not new, or my idea. I’ve been using techniques based on this since my first ocean race in about 1972 or so. ■
