Yes indeed! A very good illustration of how bad a reefed 150 can look! Mind you, we do not have a foam luff tape, which probably wouldn't help much anyway.
Furling a large headsail vs switching to a smaller one
- Thread starter YVRguy
- Start date
Scott,
It does help. Without the foam luff the Genoa has no chance at all that I've seen of being useful going to weather when partially furled. A couple of turns on the drum and the thing bags out horribly. I've done it; I've seen it. When I first went from using hanked-on sails to a Profurl system already installed on my P-30 when I bought it, I changed to a foam-luff genny with the next headsail (more $$). I've been using the foam luff now for about 20 yr. However, I know there are highly skilled sailors/racers out there who do not like 'em, etc. In winter in CA I would pull off the 150 genny and put up the 110. Hardly noticed a difference in boat speed on the Pearson.
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I agree that it does help, but not in the illustration that David posted. On that day we also had way too much sail rolled up. My new boat has a 135% genoa with foam luff, and @Ward H & I found on our first day sailing that the shape was pretty good with an appropriate amount of sail rolled up for our upwind tacks on Buzzard's Bay.
Thanks, this is my thought exactly.I think it depends. If you are out in the water and need to furl the 150, then I would do that. If you are going out for the day and you know that you will need to shorten sail, then I would take the trouble to change the sail. I can't find the picture of a race day with my 150 furled and it just looked ridiculously bad and our performance was miserable accordingly. View attachment 183454
Here's my very, very old 110 on a day when we knew we would be reefing. I think it actually looks pretty good. It certainly isn't embarrassing like the picture of my furled 150!(I'd show the picture if I could find it right now).