We went out last Tuesday (11/19) and the predicted wind speed was high teens with gusts well into the 20s. We hadn’t reefed the boat other than a year and a half ago during the “sea trial”, so we decided to practice in the bay before heading out. Once reefed, the boat popped along at about 6.5 kts and behaved very pleasantly, so we just left it reefed. We had a pleasant sail and hit 8 kts, GPS, a few times coming back in - probably due to surfing. We raised the sail fully when the wind died shortly after entering the bay. It was a 7 hour sail and we came home very tired, but it was good-tired, not bad-tired.
I asked Mark (friend with iPhone) to do a video that I could show you all and it is now posted on YouTube. If you feel inclined to look at it and offer critique or suggestions it will be appreciated.
The video is here. YouTube tries to force short videos into a “Short” format. Unfortunately, that includes lower resolution even in the "normal: viewer. https://youtube.com/watch/k4-gzldPuPo?feature=share
Brian, glad you enjoyed your reefing experience. If you have not reefed in a year and half you must be in a pretty low wind place. When you are over 20 knots the sail shape is a bit less important, but still nice to have good shape. I am of the reef early school after 50+ years of sailing and tens of thousands of miles offshore. If you are not sure if you need a reef when you are at the dock, put it in then. Much easier to take the reef out than put it in once you are sailing. I would like a flatter sail shape than in the video. Before starting the reef, ease the choker line, then ease the halyard slightly beyond where it will be when you are done - Sharpie marks one the halyard help with this. Tighten the tack as much as possible and then the same with the clew. Tighten the halyard and take in on the choker to flatten the sail. You see lots of boats (not just Nonsuches) overpowered when s reef would make things more manageable and you would likely go faster too.
Bruce Clark
Nonsuch 30, “Nonsuch”
Whitby YC, Ontario
Sorry to disagree with you, Bruce, but you should never tighten the halyard last. Doing that puts a very high strain on the slugs and the track and can cause broken slugs and pulling the track loose from the mast. The proper order is halyard, tack, clew and then the choker.
Joe Valinoti
S/V iL Gatto NS30U #221
Sea Harbour YC
Oriental, NC USA
Joe, my order of tightening operations has been tack, halyard, clew, choker. Especially if I’m leaving the dock and I know I’m going to reef it just helps to have pretightened the tack. What am I missing by not tightening the halyard first?
Maybe I am misunderstanding this, but how can you tighten the halyard before you have tightened the Tack? What keeps the halyard from just continuing to raise the sail?
Tim in STL
White O’morn NS e26U #216
Harbor Point Yacht Club
West Alton, MO
Yes, most of the year San Diego has pretty light winds. Deciding which days to sail is usually a matter of scanning Windy looking for a day with adequate winds. Last winter was my first winter with a boat down here, but the boat was out of commission due to mast repairs. So I’m not sure how the winter weather will be. Winters are pretty mild here - they don’t really even have an actual “winter” - but they do get occasional mild storms. So we’ll see how it is this winter. (I’m from the Oregon coast where only nutcases are brave enough to sail in the ocean most of the year.)
Our plan is to continue to practice putting in the reef while the sail is fully raised. We did it fine (and pretty much how you described) but it took a long time and we did it with the engine running and in gear. It was our first time, after all. We hope to get really good at it, but we’ll see.
I was unhappy with how much curve was in the sail, but was unsure what to do about it. This is one thing I was hoping to get good feedback on. We did wind in the choker as far as it would go, but it didn’t do much. And I was not confident to haul in too hard on the aft reefing line. I have never owned a small sailboat like this and the forces on a large gaff-rigged schooner are completely different. The thought of winching really hard on a piece of cloth weirds me out. Should I do it?
We have a Sharpie mark on the halyard for full-height. We talked about putting marks on it for the reef points, but want to make sure we’ve really got it down well before we make them because they are pretty permanent.
“Flat seas and a reef in, you’re one fortunate fellow. Looks like a great day aboard. Good for you.”
That was taken while we were still in the bay.
If you look beyond us you’ll see the North Island navy base. Then we go out a long channel and must stay in the channel due to an almost impassable minefield of lobster pot buoys that start immediately on the other side of the channel buoy line. That’s the most challenging part, though it was easy on that day due to the NW winds. Point Loma really speeds up the winds for a short stretch, then it’s open sea all the way to Japan.
But it was a great day aboard and I feel very lucky to be able to sail in the “winter”.
Whew! That’s a relief. If someone as experienced as Joe can get it confused, then my fumbling is easier to bear.
I suspect you’d get it right the first time in real life, it’s different sitting at home in a chair.
Brian, It might be the angle of the video, but your sail doesn’t look as flat as I’d expect a reefed main to look… I am new to NonSuch, so maybe my comment is off-base.
Did you test your pointing ability while reefed ? Tuning and trim is easier to assess when close-hauled.
I wonder if you eased the choker, and luffed the sail, if you could take in the reef line 12-18" ( my guess from the video is that your luff leach point is about 32" from where the leach line is attached to the wishbone .. 18" would bring the reefpoint 9" closer since it’s 2:1 ). Then adjust your choker and unload the topping lift if it’s loaded. See if it sail-shape changes. If it improves performance beating, repeat with smaller increments till it feels optimal. Being careful not to use excessive force.
In the video, it looks like angle of the reef line to the wishbone is about 45º. I wonder if experienced NS skippers could comment if this angle is typical?
Would love to see more videos. Thanks for taking the time to share this one.
The choker and the aft reefing line are both on the same winch. I have clutches and we did take the choker off and use the winch for the reefing line, too. But it’s fussy going back and forth and I was unsure about everything, so I probably stopped winching too early and didn’t get the clew hauled back enough. I was hoping to hear whether my concern about breaking or ripping something was reasonable or misplaced. I did not think about easing the choker and then using it to complete the tensioning of the clew. I’ll give that a try next time.
I, too, am interested in others’ opinions of how the aft reefing line is set in the video.
I will probably post more videos in the future as I have other questions. It’s easier and more clear than asking in words - especially when you might not even know what you are doing wrong. They are just cell phone videos, nothing fancy. And I’m not getting Mark washed overboard just to take a video, so there probably won’t be any in rough water.
Your concerns about breaking things when reefing are quite correct. We have not enjoyed the learning process for reefing as we have broken the clew reefing line twice, ripped stitches at the slides of the sail and suffered with a very baggy lower section of the sail. Just this year we have learned how to get a flat reefed sail shape without breaking anything and we are hoping for a less costly season next year.
Best of luck. You are getting lots of good advice. Our mistake was mostly that we were not letting the choker off enough. Don’t be afraid to let the mast end of the boom extend as far ahead of the mast as you have choker line to allow it before you tighten up the clew reef. You will tighten the sail using the choker as the last step in the process. Also be sure to tighten your tack and halyard very tight before anything else gets tight. Go back and retighten the halyard if you get any stretch in it after starting out.
One “trick” we have started using which we are not sure about its correctness is the extent to which we pull the tack down before tightening the halyard. Initially we thought we had to have the tack cringle above the lower sail slides but now we have learned we can bring it down to the elevation of the primary tack point by arranging the tack line off to the side of the other slides.
This has given us a much flatter shape in the lower part of the sail.
Hope you can follow this description.
All the best.
Rob Collie
NS 36. #24
Sarnia , Canada
Brian, I share your concern about load on the choker and wishbone. I’m still working out the procedure for reefing on Soave, and don’t have answers ( yet ). My current reefing and sail handling thoughts are :
Last season ( while trying to flatten my very old main ) I got the feeling I needed to personally inspect the hanger and choker attachment points on the wishbone before applying more than moderate load. I ended up deciding to do a full on the ground mast & wishbone inspection this winter. After seeing how Soave is built, I have more confidence in her ability to handle sensible loads even under rough conditions. I’ve found a couple places where stainless fittings are not properly isolated from aluminum, but none caused enough corrosion to compromise structural integrity ( yet ). Hanger pad-eye area of the Soave’s wishbone was the most needy in terms of arresting corrosion. At this point I think my weakest link is the winch mounted on my cabin top. When I service the winch, I’ll be checking the backing plate and cabin top to see if the deck core is compromised in that area.
The general reefing procedures offered in this thread are good, but I haven’t successfully choreographed the reefing dance on Soave. I’m currently using me and two crew. One crew at the helm, one at the main sheet, and me in the forward cockpit on the reef lines, halyard, and choker.
Soave has three cleats mounted on the cabin top next to the winch used for the choker. The designers intent ( I think? ) is that the reef lines would use either the clutch or a cleat to secure the reef lines. My thought is that ( while reefing ) setting up the new clew, should not require much effort because the sail won’t be loaded and the halyard / choker will be eased. I have not done this in heavy air yet. The new clew would be set per a measured mark on the reef line before halyard, or choker are set. Maybe reef can be set by hand with the clutch open, while using a quarter wrap on the cleat to milk the last few inches of the reef line in. If the winch is needed, it’s ok because the other lines are not loaded yet and once the new clew is set the reef line gets transferred to the cleat. I like the idea of using the cleat to ease the reef line instead of the clutch because clutches sometimes don’t release easily after being loaded. I am currently using a clutch to secure my halyard and choker and it has worked OK… maybe clutch is OK for the reef line as well.
On Long Island Sound we don’t see high winds in the summer ( except thunder storms which we try to avoid) , the 1st reef reduces sail enough. The second reef is fed through the wishbone, but not up through the 2nd reef clew. This way I don’t have as much extra line to foul when hoisting or dousing the main, but on a windy day, I could setup for the possibility of a 2nd reef at the dock.
Lastly, since my sail is in it’s twilight, I’m observing other boats to look for any useful innovations that may have taken hold over the years before purchasing a new sail. Most of the variations I’ve noted are to make sail recovery and storage easier. Full battens seem to have been experimented with, but have fallen from favor. I’m liking my over the top cover, but do find I have to fuss a bit to get the sail to sit right before I cover it. When I drop the sail, it tends to bunch forward between folds. I end up running up and down the leach a couple times tugging the sail back and roughly adjusting where the sail folds are. I may specify full battens for the upper two pockets to reduce this tendency. The only sail performance innovation I’ve noticed is some interesting wear patterns on stern corner castings on some boats. The orientation of the wear seems to imply that they might have been used to secure a temporary barber haul to compensate for a lack of traveler… not something I see as particularly beneficial and possibly dangerous. I’ve use the corner castings to secure the boom while Soave is docked to reduce bouncing, but I am careful to only use soft shackles or dock-line so I don’t contribute to further wear.
Sorry for the wordy post, this is the off-season in NY and it’s easy to ramble sitting in front of the wood-stove. Too cold to go to the boatyard today.
Having looked at the photo Brian, my first thought was that the clew reef setting was too loose. My understanding is that the reef line length under load from the exit sheeve to the cringle should be about 12 inches.
But the most important step in my view is to raise the stern end of the boom to the cringle using the topping lift before tensioning the clew reef line. I don’t recall seeing this point in your’s or Rob’s summary of reefing procedure but perhaps I missed it. It is far simpler to get the reef line tension you want by raising the boom to the cringle than to try and pull the cringle down via the reef line to the boom with the sail flogging etc. Read the Nonsuch sailing guide Bott’s Thots on the member side of the INA website.
So, underway, my reefing steps with engine started and in gear, boat pointed into the wind are : 1) release choker and main sheet 2) lower halyard 3) tension tack reef 3) raise and tension halyard 4) raise boom via topping lift 5) tension clew reef 6) release topping lift 7) tension choker 8) tension main sheet. If I’m reefing at the dock, I follow the same procedure of setting the tack reef and raising the boom before leaving.
By this procedure, it is easy to tension the clew reef line to the cleat without aid of a winch or clutch. On my boat, the topping lift is a simple setup, I raise the boom high, just short of contact between the upper and lower topping lift blocks. I used to hand crank the topping lift winch but this procedure is now very easy as we use an eWincher which has ample capability to raise the boom as would other mechanical means like a right angle drill setup etc.
Never heard about the 12 inches between exit sleeve to cringle so will check it next time I reef if only on a no wind day in my slip.
Everything else looks good particularly the point about raising the boom to bring the reef line in line with the boom.
Here’s a pic of my last reefing. Seeing it here makes me think I should have the sail drawn further aft and down. At that time I thought it was a good reef but didn’t focus much on it as the boat was sailing nicely.
Ed,
Thanks for the photo. Approximately, how many inches of halyard to you ease when preparing to reef ? In your picture, your 1st reef tack seems higher than I was guessing it would land. The top 2/3 of your sail seems flatter than the lower 1/3.
I am thinking the measurement used when dropping the halyard is a repeatable constant ( for a given sail ) that determines where the tack lands after reefing, which in turn establishes the ability of the new reef clew to flatten the lower third of the reefed sail area ( most of which is below the wishbone ) relative to the upper 2/3. My visualization is sort of like moving a jib car to adjust the angle of genoa sheets so the sail luffs evenly along it’s tack, except in our case the height of the sail is a coarse adjustment and the topping lift is a fine adjustment that can be used to de-power the top of the sail and possibly flatten the bottom since the choker keeps the wishbone from going forward.
Am I looking at this correctly ? Or maybe missing something ?
When using the topping lift, I worry about over stressing the rig. The topping lift has a lot of purchase and if you raise the boom with the choker already tight it gets tighter.
Ed:
Great to have a photo.
I had a similar shape and was told by Boston Doyle sail loft that I had too many wrinkles at the clew and too much scalloping at the luff.
They said I needed much more halyard tension. Dropping the tack down to as low as possible and tightening the halyard has flattened out the entire sail even below the boom.
Good luck
Rob
Should I do it?
