Date: 8/22/2007
Name: Stephen Jensen, San Juan 21 National Commodore
email: Charmedjuan@comcast.net

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subject: Roller furling/reefing

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This is becoming a fun topic. Yes roller furling is legal, and I don't see anything about reefing your jib with the furler being prohibited. Why you would reef the working jib I don’t know, and if you have the Genoa, you would loose all it’s shape when doing so. There was some experimenting with padded luffs that kept the shape of the genoas but I don’t know if they worked that well. Remember that you have a large rolled mass in front of the jib that will disturb the air flow. There are some booms that rotate so rolling up the main around the boom is possible, sort of. Doing so would mean that the Boom Vang would have to be removed, and the mainsheet would have to be attached to end of the boom. You would not have any method of controlling the foot tension and what ever tension on the main halyard will want to unroll the boom. This would put some strain on the gooseneck, an already week component of our boats.

Stephen

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