![]() It’s just a matter of knowing what to do. Like many aspects of sailing, reefing efficiently is no more difficult than reefing badly. ![]() That some boats succeed in making to windward at all is despite what the crew is doing, not because of it. More’s the pity, then, that so many cruisers can be seen labouring upwind in a breeze with sails that have been rolled and pulled into all sorts of horrible shapes. In a situation like this, we need to make best use of the power we have at our disposal. The hill we’re climbing has become steeper, yet we have less power with which to climb it. If we roll our headsail it will lose much of its shape. The windage of the hull, superstructure, sprayhood and dodgers becomes greater in relation to our sail area. Once we have reefed, the top of the rig is contributing nothing but weight, windage, heel and pitching moment: we can’t reef the mast. If weather helm develops, we will be using more rudder angle to maintain our course, further increasing drag. More forestay sag will be making the headsail fuller just when we don’t want it to be. ![]() Less speed, more pitching and more heel mean the keel is generating less lift. Unless we’re close to a weather shore, bigger waves will be slowing us down. By the time it reaches the ‘we really need to do something’ stage, things have got a lot tougher for the boat. It’s a familiar situation: we’re sailing along in a breeze that picks up to the point where we start to think about reefing.
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