Single or double line reefing

[Captain Larry-DH]

I have single line reefing for 1st and 2nd reef on my C30 and love it. When I first installed it I had all of the problems that Scott T Bird and TW mention but that was due to the friction of the line sliding through the cringles. I added bearing blocks to both and now love it. I can pull in a reef single handed from full trim to full trim in under 60 seconds.

Yes, have a salimaker sew low friction blocks to the sail at the places you would otherwise have cringles, so there is no sliding through cringles.

 

[DougM]

The single line reefing on my P31-2 leads to a Lewmar 30ST winch, so whatever friction there is in the system is immaterial to quickly and easily putting in a reef, as winch power makes light work of the task. An operational issue, to the extent that there is any, is that the reefing line is quite long, as it needs to bring down both the leech and the luff, so setting a reef may take 10-20 turns of the winch, a lot of turns, however light each may be... Any effort to reduce fiction in the system would be of little purpose...

I don’t understand why you would need to use a winch at all to put in a reef unless its simply for the convenience.
My boat is set up to be able to do that, but I have never had the need. I can’t imagine there would be that much friction in the system. Just ease the halyard, pull in the reef line, tack end comes down tight to the boom, clew end follows and is pulled tight to the boom because of the angle of the line to the end of the boom. When set, re-tension the halyard.

 

[Hans Baart]

Thanks for all the informative replies.
I have some work to do.
Cheers