Reef Clew Line Setup

When setting up your reef lines, you have many choices. 

Single Line Reefing
Double Line Reefing
Slab Reefing

I want to discuss the clew lines which are run in a similar fashion through the sails in all of these different systems. The standard way of running the clew lines involves running the clew line from a fixed point on the boom, up through the sail's clew cringle, and down the other side of the sail. This will pull the sail down to the boom when reefing, but it will also bunch up under the cringle and get pulled into the cringle by the reef line. This can pull a chunk of sail through the cringle with the line and make a nice hole in the leech. To fix this problem, the clew line can be run a different way and avoid the whole problem all together.

Standard reef line setup

Alternate reef line setup

The alternate way to run the clew reef line is to pass it up between the boom and sail (putting the line on the same side as the cheek block), through the cringle, over the leech and back down the same side to the cheek block. This will cause the sail to be pushed to the side of the boom as the reef is being drawn in. Since the sail is out of the way, it will not bunch up and get pulled through the cringle. While this sounds wonderful, it will cause more wear on the leech of the sail, leading to chafe issues which are easily remedied with chafe patches.

The sail will be dumped to the side of the boom, avoiding any risk of it getting caught in the cringle and torn. It is helpful to have lazy jacks to collect the sail as it gets tossed to the side.

Alternatives to Reefing

When weather catches you offguard and you don't have time to reef just yet, these are ways to put it off for a moment. They involve using the sails to either spill air or to work against each other to reduce their efficiency.

A Fisherman's Reef is when you ease the mainsheet and sheet in the jib. This will create a bubble in the main that will take away the mains power. This is a very temporary fix that can help to depower the main during a blow. The air that comes off of the jib will blast into the eased main and create a bubble in the luff. This reduces the amount of sail area actually working and sort of accomplishes the goals of reefing temporarily.

Back winding the main is very similar to a Fisherman's Reef, but it doesn't involve easing the main. The over sheeted jib will create a similar bubble to the Fisherman's Reef which will reduce the effective sail area of the main, and depower the sails to a lesser extent than the Fisherman's Reef.

Tightening the topping lift will raise the boom and force a twist into the sail. This will allow you to sheet the sail in close hauled while still maintaining a twist. The twist will spill almost all of the air in the top of the sail which will greatly reduce heeling. The top of the sail can turn into a flag and begin flogging which is damaging to the sailcloth. If the sail begins to flog, a reef should be put in immediately.

Lastly, you can ease the sails and change course onto a run. This will lower the apparent wind speed and make conditions feel somewhat calmer while you put in your reefs. 

You may have noticed that all of these alternatives to reefing simply buy some time when you need to reef, but they all end in putting the reef in. This is because there is no replacement for reefing when it is necessary.

Trim, comfort, and control will be restored once the sails are reefed for the appropriate weather conditions.

When to Reef

When should you reef your sails? This is a common question with no definitive answer. Some common guidelines used for determining when to reef are:

A set windspeed
The first sighting of a whitecap
The approach of storm clouds on the horizon
First sight of rain
Crew comfort
Preparing to Heave-to
Gut feeling

Many sailors put in reefs at arbitrarily set wind speeds. A common guideline is to put the first reef in at 15 knots, and the second reef at 20 knots of wind speed. From this guideline, you can then determine when you want to reef. If you feel fine at 15 knots, keep the sails up a little longer. When you finally decide you wanted to reef, look at the wind speed; next time reef a few knots sooner than the current windspeed.

On Wisdom, we put the first reef in at 20 knots, and the second reef at 27 knots. We also drop the Jib at 20 knots, and fly the staysail all the way through to really high wind speeds.

On Windpuff, we have no instruments, so we reef at the first sign of whitecap or approaching storm cloud. Reefing based on whitecaps is a good indicator, as they tend to form in response to building wind conditions. I like to reef at the first sight of a storm cloud because I prefer to go forward to the mast in calm weather and await the winds with reduced sails instead of being caught off guard.

Rain on the horizon usually accompanies an approaching squall with high winds. The dark curtain approaching your boat is an excellent signal to put the reefs in. The only thing worse than putting in reefs during high winds is being pelted with stinging water droplets!

On a completely different note that does not involve weather or storms is crew comfort. If you have a frightful person on board, you may have to put in a reef to keep them calm. I have taken friends sailing and they panic when we heel over, leading me to put in 2 reefs in winds of 12 knots. We hardly moved, but the boat did not heel. With time, they became more confident that the boat will not flip over and allowed me to shake out the reefs one at a time. Eventually we were sailing along under full sail at hull speed and everyone had a good time! If I had told them to tough it out and hold onto the heeling hull, they would have been traumatized and probably never gone sailing again. While crew comfort is not related to weather conditions or sail trim, it is a valuable indicator for when to reef.

One last reason to reef the sails is when you are preparing to heave to for the night. The weather may be calm and the seas tranquil, but they might change during the night. By reefing the sails all the way down before heaving to, you can sleep comfortably and confidently through the night!

The least scientific method (which is also my go to method) is sail trim. When the wind builds, we ease the sheets to control the amount of heeling. When the leech begins to flutter because the sail has been eased too far and we are still heeled over, we typically put in a reef. This allows us to trim the sail perfectly once again and maintain the keel in a more efficient orientation. If the wind eases up and we loose speed, we wait 15-30 minutes before we shake the reef out (in case it was simply a lull in the wind, we wait to make sure the wind doesn't pick up again and catch us over-canvassed).

When do you typically put in your reefs?

What is Reefing?

When you are sailing along on a beautiful day and dark clouds roll in, your day is about to change. White caps will begin to crop up as the wind builds, pushing you along with a stiffer breeze. The sails will take all this wind and turn it into huge amounts of power to move your yacht through the chop! At the same time, the boat will begin to lean over much further than it was before the weather changed. What do you do now?

If you have strong rigging, capable crew, and a sea worthy vessel, you can enjoy sailing along heeled over with a rail in the water. It is very exhilarating to stand on the cockpit combings as you plow your way through the seas!  

The boat won't flip from sailing heeled over very far, but it will sail much less efficiently than if it were properly trimmed. As the wind pushes you over, the sails will spill wind off the top of them as they begin to lay flat to the wind. At the same time, the keel will begin to lift out of the deep water offering less resistance towards leeway movement. The end result is the boat will lose power in its sails and begin to slide sideways as the keel loses effectiveness. 

To keep the yacht more upright, the best solution is to make the sails smaller via reefing. Reefing presents less sail to the wind, which means less power generated by the sails. This might seem like it will make you move more slowly, when in fact it will do the opposite. The wind is blowing so hard that these smaller reefed sails will generate all the power you need to move through the storm conditions. Since the sails are not overpowering the sailboat anymore, the boat will stay more upright allowing the keel to work more efficiently which allows you to move forward instead of sideways. 

Why does reefing work? Physics!

Sails present an area to the wind to form airfoils that act like wings to generate lift. This force will balance itself onto one point called the Center of Effort. This point is basically the sum of the force from the wind that is pushing on the boat. This point can be moved by trimming the sails.

If the sails are all the way up, the Center of Effort is going to be very high and will result in more heeling. If the Center of Effort is brought down, it will not have as much leverage and will result in less heeling. This point can also be moved fore and aft, depending on sail trim. If you have a jib up with no main, the Center of Effort will be forward (lee helm). If you have the main up with no jib, the Center of Effort will be aft (weather helm). 

The position of the Center of Effort will have a great effect on how the helm feels. Too far forward will result in Lee Helm, too far aft will result in Weather Helm (Lee Helm turns you towards the lee, Weather Helm turns you into the weather).

When you reef your sails, the main comes down which will move the Center of Effort down and closer to the mast. When you reef the jib (or furl it up partially) you move the Center of Effort forward. This is why Cutters perform better than sloops in heavy weather. A reefed sloop will move its Center of Effort forward while a cutter will lower its jib and fly a reefed main and staysail, which moves the Center of Effort down and closer to the mast. This keeps the helm balanced and under control in heavy weather. 

The take home message is: Reefing makes your sails smaller to maintain proper control of your vessel. This makes the heavy weather sailing much more comfortable and much less intimidating. 

Laminated vs Dacron Sails

When you are in the market for new sails, the number of available options might seem overwhelming! You will quickly be flooded with options like:

Dacron
Laminate
Taffeta Coating
Technora
Aramid
Tri Radial
Cross Cut
Carbon
ect.

To make these options make more sense, lets break it down into two camps:

Laminated Sails (Membrane)

Membrane sails are made by laminating various layers together to form the sail. These sails are not cut into pieces because the are made in one piece. The choices fall into what the layers are made of.

Dacron Sails (Cloth)

Cloth sails are made of polyester fibers that are woven into panels of cloth. These panels are then cut in various shapes: Cross Cut or Tri Radial

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Dacron sails will last for many years, but they will only hold their proper shape for a few years, then the begin to stretch out and become baggy. The panels are the weak point, the larger the panel, the more profound the stretching will be. 

Cross Cut Sail

Tri-Radial Cut Sail

Cross cut sails have large horizontal panels that will stretch rather quickly. The alternative is to have the panels cut into many smaller panels arranged in a way that they will help distribute the forces, prolonging its life of ideal sail shape.

This method is called Tri Radial cut sails. These sails are easy to distinguish from Cross Cut sails because Cross Cut look like rectangles stacked on top of each other. Tri Radial cut sails look like origami that has been unfolded.

It is not uncommon to see really old dacron sails (over 20 years old) because they hold together for a long time. They are rather resistant to chafe and any holes can be easily patched. Just be sure to examine your sails and replace them when they begin to sag in the wind like large burlap bags.

Another feature of dacron sails is they can be easily modified. If you decide you need an extra reef point, a sailmaker can easily sew one in for you without too much effort. This makes afterthought modifications possible, relieving some of the stress during the design process of the sail. If you are not sure that you will need a third reef, you can always add it later if you find that you did!

Dacron sails are also available in a selection of colors, the most common is white. Tanbark is a less common but still readily available color of dacron. Some specialty sailmakers offer dacron sails in a multitude of colors, but these locations are hard to find.

The alternative to Dacron is Laminated Sails. These sails are made by laminating various membranes and layers together to form a sail comprised of a single piece. There are no panels involved in the construction. Instead, fibers are run along the stressed load lines of the sail to evenly distribute the forces placed on them. These sails will never stretch until the day that they die, which is anywhere from 2 to 7 years (depending on how it is designed). While this might sound like a short lifespan, it is not!

Compare a laminated sail that lasts for 5 years to a dacron sails that lives for over 20 years. It might seem like a short life, but the dacron sail only held its shape for a few years and then began to stretch. The laminated sail held its shape perfectly for the whole 5 years, 2.5x the life of the dacron sail before it stretched! 

Where dacron sails stretch out, laminated sails die in an explosive display. The laminates will separate in a process known as delamination which spells the end for the sail. A repair can be attempted, but it is the end for the sail. 

Laminated sails also offer greatly reduced weight over dacron sails, which translates into reduced weight aloft. Racing sails offer the greatest weight savings, but also last the shortest amount of time. These are the sails that seem see through from a distance because they are purely milar and fibers. The fibers are what give these sails their colors. 

Black fibers are from Carbon and Technora
Gold fibers are from Aramid
Tan fibers are from Vectran
White fibers are from Polyester

These see through racing sails will last between 2 to 3 years before the delaminate.

Cruising versions of laminated sails last longer by providing the sails with a Taffeta coating. This will extend the life of the sail to 5 to 7 years. Taffeta can be applied on one side for some protection or both sides for maximum protection. Taffeta gives the sail a white look, with the fibers shinning through. From a distance, these look like regular sails until you notice the fiber bands running through the sail.

The reason taffeta helps protect the laminated sails is because it is made of dacron! This coating helps protect the sail from chafe and wear, but it does add considerable weight to the sail. If you decide to go with a laminated sail, I strongly recommend the taffeta coating, it only costs a little extra but it greatly increases the longevity of the sail.

If you are planning a long offshore voyage with laminate sails, I would strongly urge you to carry a spare set of sails in the event that one of the sails dies while offshore. 

The choice ultimately comes down to what suits your needs best? If you are racing, then a stripped down laminated sail is right up your alley. If you are doing coastal cruising or short offshore jaunts, laminated sails with taffeta coating will provide a wonderful service life for you. If you plan on sailing far offshore, bullet proof dacron sails might be your best choice. They won't hold their shape forever, but you will always have a sail to get you home!