How To Improve your Reefing System

It is a beautiful day out sailing and you are enjoying the moment. Then you see the late summer thunderheads headed your way. Wow, they are moving fast, and look nasty. So if you are alone, family sailing, or in a fully crew race, the first thing you do is shorten sail.

When I coach shorthanded sailors I use the analogy of riding a bike up a steep hill, “Shift often, and Shift early”. The same is true for reefing when sailing. You will not loose being a little early, but it will be a mess if you are late.

There are a lot of ways to shorten sail. One of the easiest is reefing the main if you have a great system. Smaller (up to 10 meters) shorthanded boats I have use single-line reefing, bigger boats I use two line reefing. Either way you need a simple way of doing this fast and efficiently.

With most production boats there is either a bolt rope or plastic slides in the mast. Bolt rope in the track is not something you want when reefing. You have to pull the bolt rope out of the track, have all this loose luff to secure. And plastic slides jam, break, and will cause a major problems.

Ronstan Marine Hardware has come up with an excellent solution to retro fit on your aluminum or carbon mast that has a luff groove. In the two videos below I show you this great system, and how to install it on your mast. Then I show you my favorite single line reefing system for a 31′ singlehanded shorthanded boat.

Have Fun, Be Kind, Safe, See you soon. Paul