Thanks everyone for the great information! I did search the achieves at www.msog.org and found some great threads. A couple of threads pointed to an article on reefing from Pineapple Sales http://www.sailmaker.com/articles/reefing.htm . The article was good reading, as was the achieves, and your replies. Thank You! There seems to be 2 schools of thought regarding on what point of sail to reef a small boat. Some prefer to reef on a close reach, other prefer to reef while hove-to. In our M-15 (#407) all our lines are lead aft but, as I sail alone, I still must let go of the tiller in order to reef. I am concerned about letting go of the tiller on a close reach in high winds. Certainly she would fall off-wind or round up? Any thoughts or comments? The heave-to method would allow me to secure the tiller in a hard-over position and then have both hands free to work the lines. I want to give this method a try next time but will first practice and attempt to perfect heaving-to! It looks like I made 2 mistakes yesterday while heaving-to. 1- The back winded Jib was not fully flat, I should have sheeted it in tighter. And 2- it sounds like I should have sheeted in the main just a bit. I will give these a try on Monday. From the pictures in the books <grin> I was expecting the bow to be apx. into the wind, with a side-to-side wiggle. Yesterday I hove-to on a port tack and the bow settled apx. 30 degrees off-wind to port and no-wiggle. I also seemed to be making more forward headway than I expected, apx. 1.7 - 1.9 knots of forward movement in apx. 15 - 20 knots of wind. Any other thoughts or ideas? Thanks again, Randy Graves M-15 #407
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