2 or 3 reef points???

[CaptainRivet]

Always 3 reef points if it’s not a totally undercanvased motorsailor. More options to react for maybe 500Euro total.
Having 100sqm sail area on my 6.5t 40ft cat is not undercanvased.
So in practice I use reef 1 and 3, very rarely 2.
As jmh2002 wrote it takes not very much from reef to reef.
So I play safe and from my experience if you get reef 2 condition you need the 3rd reef soon. So I just go from reef 1 to 3, if I loose something it’s 1kn to 0, mostly 0….I am cruiser, not racer
I only use reef 2 if conditions for reef 1 were stable over some time and on the upper edge of it to reduce stress on the rig and material. Mine came with 3 reefs from factory.

[aj676]

Thank you all for the invaluable feedback! It definitely gave us food for thought and we had some good conversations with the sailmaker. We ended up going with 3 reefs. We're happy to have the options.

Thanks again!

[Alistair242]

Its always good to have the third when you need it.
The newer Seawinds have three reefing points in the sail and the single line reefing is on blocks with snap shackles at the reefing points. There are 2 reefing lines standard and you can move the first reefing line to the the third reef if you need it. There is also an option to have a third reef permanently rigged.
Square top mains also can spill a little air when overpowered to relieve some strain.

[thomm225]

Originally Posted by Georgiamarie

This is probably a stupid question, can’t you just de-power the sail instead of reefing

To a certain point you can.

When racing Beach Cats which usually weight around 300 lbs, we don't reef, we de-power.

In this regatta, the winds started out at 18 knots and we had several race delays due to winds exceeding the limit for 5 minutes which was 21-22 knots.

In the upwind photo, I have the mast rotated to the max to de-power and the sail sheeted out a bit, and as you can see by the tell tales, I am pinching up a bit to maintain control. With more weight or a reef I could have fallen off some for more speed

Spinnaker is not in all the way due to rough downwind mark rounding and it jammed but I figured would correct itself on the next downwind leg.

Not sure why I am bent at the waist looking but maybe to see the marks ahead. it's hard to make the tacking calls singlehanded

Photo with spinnaker up is after I crossed the start finish line and turned down to lower the hull. You can see I have more sheet out and the traveler is out further for the downwind leg but not much.

That downwind leg must have been at top speed nearing 25 knots or so. Lucky I didn't pitch pole again. This in 2002-2004.

BTW this 300 lbs 17' Nacra has about the same sail area as my 6600 lbs Bristol 27

But the important thing to remember is this is a 3-4 hour race not a 3-4 day weather event offshore.

[smj]

Wouldn’t it depower the sail more if you rotated the mast the other way? Looks like the mast is well set to power up to me.

[thomm225]

Originally Posted by smj

Wouldn’t it depower the sail more if you rotated the mast the other way? Looks like the mast is well set to power up to me.

Mast is flat into the wind.

Some folks go the other way though, but I think that is on two man boats. The mast rotator line is along the front beam which you cannot see in the picture but might be hard to get to in this wind so I may have just released it.

I have the tiller, main sheet, traveler, and down hull lines where I am on the trapeze. Main sheet block is 8 to 1.

Sometimes in big wind you are unable to make all the adjustment you want being singlehanded on a boat this light with a lot of sail up

You can see by the spinnaker not being all the way in that I didn't have that great of a downwind mark rounding. It gets complicated coming in at 22 knots plus singlehanded, dropping the spinnaker, then rounding and setting up for upwind in 15-20 seconds which means making the turn, bring in the traveler, sheeting in the main then getting back out on the trapeze all simultaneously