Reefing Vagrant

This post is about how we manage reefing on Vagrant, a Boréal 47. I'm posting it here rather than to the owner's group since it may be of general interest if you're not lucky enough to sail a Boréal yourself.

I'm writing this at 42°N 15°W, about 300 miles west of Cape Finisterre. It's late September and we're on passage from the Azores back to the UK. For the next 24 hours we'll ride a big low that is passing to the north west. Currently it's blowing 30 knots, regularly gusting to 40 knots, and there's a 3m sea with a nasty cross set. The NKE autopilot is steering to a true wind angle of 110° and doing its usual impressive job. We've deliberately taken a more easterly route using the edge of the low to avoid the chaos forecast towards its centre.

I've just put in a fourth reef in the main and swapped from the genoa to the trinquette (staysail). We use the fourth reef very rarely – this is the third time in four years –  but prefer to do so over dropping the main and setting more foresail since it's then easier to re-hoist the third reef after a blow without having to head up to wind.

Over the years, we have developed a few techniques and modifications to our rigging. Vagrant is a 47.1 with a Sparcraft masthead rig with straight spreaders, and is set up to manage everything at the mast. Some details will be different on a Boreal 47.2 with a Selden rig.

Our first recommendation is to get rid of the main halyard rope clutch. On Vagrant, this was a Lewmar DC2. I don't like Lewmar clutches; we have history. The Lewmar DC1 clutch for the foresail reefing lines opened aft and the cam action was so weak that a big wave could open it, with predictably hilarious consequences. We modified it so we could tie it shut and later, when it later started slipping under moderate load, we replaced it with a Spinlock model which is so much better. I'd better return to discussing the halyard clutch before I digress further and talk about the Lewmar genoa car cam cleats (also replaced). So, why wouldn't you want a main halyard clutch? Reason 1: it is extra friction, making raising and lowering the main harder. Reason 2: it is mounted on the mast in a stupid place, making it hard to sweat the halyard and giving a poor lead to the winch. Reason 3: for reefing, its unnecessary - you never need to unload the winch, but you better remember to open and close the clutch or something is going to get wrapped around that big handle. As luck would have it, one day I managed to wrap the halyard itself around the clutch handle and failed to spot this before I cranked hard on the winch. This solved the problem.The only downside of losing the clutch is the need to dedicate a winch to the main halyard. 

Gone, but not missed

We have a permanently rigged sail tie on the port granny bar to hold the halyard coils. Using the sail tie is much easier than securing and unsecuring the halyard the traditional way, and preserves the coil shape better. When we reef, we undo a single clove hitch in the sail tie, count off three coils, then refix it. The sail tail tie is long enough that we can keep two or three sections of the halyard separate, further reducing the work to put in and shake out a reef.

When reefing down wind, it can be a struggle to get the sail down. We usually wind the main in a bit to keep the weight of the sail off the shrouds, keep a wrap on the winch to stop it from dropping rapidly, then crank some tension into the reefing line. This way, we can bring the tack and the clew down together in a controlled fashion, roughly parallel to the boom. We have learnt that it is important to be constantly pulling in the slack of the higher reefing lines; you do not want them to fly in the wind and wrap around the boom. One of the hardest parts, particularly for the third and fourth reefs, is getting the reefing ring down onto the reef hook. We find it very useful to fix a short length of line to one of the lazy jack cleats and feed it through the ring. The 2:1 purchase of this temporary "Cunningham" is often enough to pull the ring down, but if not, we use the starboard mast winch. The line also helps to keep the ring on the hook while we tension the halyard.

Vagrant has a lazy bag with webbing straps that must be tied back to avoid being whipped in the face while busy with reefing heroics. On the starboard side, they can be simply looped under the support pole. On port, we stitched in a tie back that can be threaded through the webbing loops. If I did this again, I'd simply fix the tie back to the support pole.

Since our Morroco-to-Tunisia passage, we prefer to stow the dinghy on the foredeck for ocean passages. This time around we put some thought into being able to safely furl and unfurl the trinquette. The self-tacking sheet really likes to slide around when unfurling, and risks getting itself tangled around the stern of the dinghy. We chose to "disable" the self-tacking with a long soft-shackle. It needs attention if you want to tack, but that's rare on an offshore passage.

To make it easier to furl the trinquette, we also have added a short dyneema strop to the the clew block. This lets us get a wrap of the sheet around the sail before the block is non-functional.

Finally, here's a summary of things that help with the raising and lowering the main. They have all been sourced from the Boréal Facebook group and are well covered there, so I'll be brief.

1. Either swap to a 1:1 halyard, or buy an Antal head car block.
2. Replace the elastic strops to the intermediate sliders with sewn webbing loops. I was sceptical, but this made a huge difference.
3. Keep the track clean and every month or two, run some neat washing up liquid ("dish soap") up the track to lubricate it. Don't use grease or anything that will trap sand. To avoid going up the mast, I have disconnected the head car slider and added a temporary downhaul so I can pull it up and down the track. But this is overkill, its the bottom few metres that are the most important.
4. If you've plenty of excess money, consider replacing some of the fibre sliders with Antal bearing cars. This remains beyond my means.

I'm typing this up the next day, surfing dead downwind in 20 knots and sunshine. Yesterday, the wind slowly increased until its peak around midnight . We had an hour or two of 40 knot winds, with peak gusts of 48. It was pitch black through the night - clouds obscured the sliver of a moon and the stars. We passed a single tanker working its way to windward. Its two bright arc lights appeared and disappeared in the swell, even at a distance of 3 NM. We were mightily annoyed by the cross seas thumping the hull every 10 minutes or so, throwing the boat off course for a few seconds and waking whoever was off-watch. By 0200, the wind and waves were lessening. Our noon-to-noon run was 166 NM.