Roller reefing the main?

[Guest]

I have read references to roller reefing the main sail and do not know if it is possible or not on my boat (1976 O'Day 22). And if possible, does this then prevent the use of the boom vang?

 

[Greg Jones]

Roler Reef Main

I have an O'D 26 with a roller reefed main and think it works great - particularly since I do a lot of singlehanded saling. All line are lead to the cockpit so it's easy to raise/lower and reef as required. The previous owner had the original mast and boom retrofitted at a local yard here in Dartmouth MA about five years ago. You do loose a little performance becasue the sail is loose fotted along the boom and the size of the main itslef seems marginaly smaller than the one on my previous O'D 25 - but overall I think it's a good trade off for the type of use I have the boat for. I still have a vang attached to my boom although I am not sure that it is terribly effective given the nature of a loose fotted main sail. God luck.Greg Jones

 

[Alan Gruber]

Roller Reefing my 22

I have a 1978 22 with roller reefing. On mine you just grab the back end of the boom (the sheet end) and pull back (aft). The boom roller clunks back about a half an inch and it will rotate in either direction. Roll up some sail, then align the boom up and down and push back in. No, I can't use the vang. Mine is connected with a bead on a cable to a slide on the bottom of the boom. The reefed sail covers it. The sail has a poor shape, but it works. The boom hangs lower over the cabin. Watch your head, I learned the hard way.

 

[Rod Johnson]

Different type of roller-reefing

Greg, what you have is not the type of roller-reefing that was standard equipment on the smaller O'Days (Javelin, DS, Mariner, 19, 20, 22). The smaller boats had a gooseneck designed to allow one to rotate the boom and roll the main around the boom to reef the sail. The sail was not loose-footed, it still had a bolt-rope along the foot. This type of roller-reefing would prevent using a boom-vang and resulted in poor sail shape when reefed. It worked, but many of us who own boats with the rooler-reefing booms, have converted over to Jiffy-Reefing, also known as slab-reefing.It sounds like you have a system that is similar to a jib reefer/furler, but rigged along the trailing edge of the mast. The roller-reefing mentioned on an O'DAY 22 reefs around the boom.