Every boat is a bit different, but for a cruising you generally want to reef a bit before a racer because you don’t have 8 fat guys on the rail. C&Cs in general are big-jib small-main boats, so cruising you usually would not bother with a first reef in the main. I don’t even have the first reef strung right now, I only have the second one. I will restring the third one before I head offshore again. 35 knots is not extreme for our boats except a few of the smaller models. I would on my old 35 MK I have a 2nd reef main and working jib or genoa reefed down to that size. 50 knots for me is a storm jib and maybe a triple reefed main. The general idea for upwind work cruising is you reef enough to not have the boat badly out of balance and not heeled past say 25 degrees. OTOH you can’t reef down too much or you have no drive to get through the chop. With furling genoas rolling the sail in is easy and reefing the main is hard, but most of our boats will sail better usually with more jib and less main than vice versa if you can.
Another thought is there are limits to furling sails. In no way is a storm-jib sized piece of a slightly unrolled 140% genoa equivalent to an actual storm jib. Besides for the shape being horrible, you have a big roll of sail adding a lot of drag. If you know in advance it will be a heavy air day and you have the inventory, better to unrig the big genoa and have a working job or storm jib. Last thought – reefing the main lowers the center of effort, rolling in the jib does not. Joe Della Barba Coquina C&C 35 MK I From: CnC-List [mailto:cnc-list-boun...@cnc-list.com] On Behalf Of Brian Fry via CnC-List Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2018 7:50 PM To: cnc-list <cnc-list@cnc-list.com> Cc: Brian Fry <biker...@yahoo.com> Subject: [EXTERNAL] Stus-List Sail plan and heavy weather. After spending a wonderful weekend with a bunch of great folks, Manon and I sailed back to Havre de Grace under the strongest conditions we have been in yet. We usually stay put if the forecast is over 20. The forecast was 20s with gusts to 30+. I was looking forward to testing my new rig, especially since Josh allowed me to use his Loos gauge to check my rig job. Turns out my tune was quite true. We had been out before, but only at a max of about 20. We set sail at the yellow mark outside Nap with 2 reefs in the main and a full 100 jib. Everything was going well, a nice beam reach, until north of the bridge when the swells got larger and the gusts stronger. The gusts would push us over to the rails in the water and last for a good 30 seconds, then a swell would push us a little further. A few times we lost depth indication, a tell that the transducer was out of the water, or nearly so. Reefing the jib to 50% made things much more comfortable. We sailed the whole way back under these conditions. Entering HdG channel was challenging, putting us close hauled and tacking up the channel to where it ran abeam again. Thankfully my new sonar allowed for greater tacks outside of the channel, which freaked out the Admiral. I decided to tack instead of motoring and dropping sail to avoid turning the sails into rags in the 25 knot winds ( mine are of unknown age). So now the question, when do you reef? How much wind is too much? We usually do the first reef at 15, the second at 20, then the jib at 25. I am thinking 35 sustained would be my limit. But I havent been out in that yet. S/V La Neige 1993 C&C 37/40 XL Havre de Grace , MD FB blog : thenext14years Brian and Manon
_______________________________________________ Thanks everyone for supporting this list with your contributions. Each and every one is greatly appreciated. If you want to support the list - use PayPal to send contribution -- https://www.paypal.me/stumurray
