Furling sails
[* There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch] This thread has nagged at my (sub)conscience for a few days. Although I don't disagree with most of the comments I also feel that the original poster has not been given a straight answer to his question yet. After all, he has sailed an Olson 25 and presumably knows quite well that he needs to depower his sails by flattening and/or reefing when the wind pipes up. The real question is: why does the Hunter 36 appear to react differently. Is this an unusually tender design or is something else going on? I wholeheartedly agree with Chuck's advice to try and FLATTEN the main first. In my experience, many sailors underestimate the effectiveness of that simple procedure. Basically, all you do is tighten the main halyard and the outhaul. On large mains with lots of luff-slide friction it may be helpful to tension the luff by pulling DOWN (i.e using a Cunningham) rather than by pulling UP only (i.e. using the main halyard). The 15-year old, rather baggy mainsail on our Hunter Legend 43 actually handles 20 knots of wind better when simply well-flattened plus twisted than after pulling in the first reef. Why? Because the foot of the reefed main cannot be stretched as effectively as the foot of the full main. Thus, we handle 16-20 knots by flattening and twisting and go straight to second reef if the wind keeps increasing further. Due to the full battens and the fact that the two most baggy slabs of the main are now tucked away, flattening the double-reefed main produces a nearly perfectly shaped blade which performs well into the 30 knot range. After that we pull in the 3rd reef, if necessary. Now look at the same situation with an in-mast furling main. If such a main is no longer brandnew and starts to become a little baggy, especially without the support of a full corset of battens, how much flattening can be done by tensioning the outhaul and main halyard (presuming you even would WANT to put that kind of strain on your expensive mechanism)?? So, with an in-mast furling main one will just have to shorten sail a bit earlier and a bit further than if one can flatten the main more effectively. The story for the jib is pretty much the same: flattening and twisting should be the first line of defense; NOT reefing. Especially not reefing by furling unless you have a special luff-patch or foil-rotation trick up your sleeve, as the resulting loss of shape may leave you floundering, especially when trying to point high. Even with special furling tricks, however, how is one going to flatten the jib by tensioning the luff or the foot?? The luff of a furled jib simply cannot be tensioned at all, whereas watching the foot of a furled jib being strongly tensioned for more than a few minutes makes most sailors cringe. On Rivendel II we rarely ever reef the jib by furling (and then only for a few minutes). Instead we roll it up fairly early and switch to the staysail (flown from a separate inner stay with its own furling mechanism). Flying Dutchman PS IMHO, moving the jib sheet car forward and easing the sheet, as described by Jim, is not the way to spill the wind. Instead you want to stretch the foot by moving the car AFT. Just make a drawing of the diferences in relative foot and leech tensions when the direction of sheet pull on the clew is oriented more downward, as opposed to when it is oriented more aft....
