My Caliber 28 sailboat Endeavour came rigged with a single reef led back to a clutch in the cockpit. It had no outhaul or additional reefs. As someone who needs to tweak everything onboard, having no outhaul on my mainsail was definitely not an option. And I wanted to take the boat offshore (which I eventually did while delivering her to the Chesapeake from Florida, but that's another story).
This article shows how I developed a purchase system for my reef lines and outhaul and details how I set slab reefs as a singlehanded sailor.
The Caliber 28 came standard with an Isomat NB-32 boom, which is a really solid, excellently designed spar. Unusually for such a small boat, this spar has sheaves at the gooseneck and end for up to four control lines to be run through the boom. So the spar itself easily allowed for adding an outhaul and more reefs.
The sticking point, however, would be tensioning and cleating off those lines. For good sail shape, these controls need to be able to handle hundreds of pounds or more of tension. And they need to be releasable and adjustable under load. I didn't want to run the lines back to the cockpit winches, adding to the clutter in the cockpit.
The standard approach on many boats is to install a winch on the side of the boom. But the control lines exiting from the bottom provide a bad lead to anything mounted on the side. I would have to mount a winch underneath the boom, which would be very awkward to use.
So if I couldn't use a winch, how could I get sufficient tension on the outhaul and reef lines?
The only good alternative to winches is to create a block-and-tackle purchase system to reduce the load and add fine control. However, reefs present a challenge for a purchase system. Purchases trade load for distance -- a 6:1 purchase reduces the load to one-sixth but requires pulling six times farther. The deep third reef line on Endeavour is about 50 ft long, which would require pulling 300 ft of line to set the reef!
Sharing a purchase system
Two insights helped me resolve this challenge:
- Only one of the four lines will ever be loaded at once
- The purchase is only necessary for tension, not for most of the effort of taking in the reef
So I just needed to come up with a way to share one purchase system across four lines, and only apply that purchase for the last bit of tension on the reef lines.
I achieved this by installing a vertical 6:1 purchase system at the mast base, with a snap shackle for quick release at the top end. When no reefs are set, this snap shackle attaches to a spliced eye in the dyneema outhaul.
Each of the reef lines is actually two lines attached together. The 'near' end is a polyester double braid with a spliced loop. The 'far' end is dyneema and also has a spliced loop which runs through the polyester part. The grippable polyester line acts as a leader line to pull the dyneema through the boom. The loops are small enough that they can easily run through the sheaves and exit points on the boom. Once the dyneema loop is exposed, the snap shackle can be released from the outhaul and attached to the reef line.
Once the purchase system is attached, the reef line can be easily tensioned to set the reef. When it comes time to set the next reef or shake the reef out, the snap shackle is simply released and moved to the next line.
Clew-end rigging
At the other end of the boom, the reef lines run out through the boom end sheaves, up through the sail, and down around the boom. They are fastened around the boom using soft shackles so that the sail can be removed without rerigging the entire setup.
The outhaul runs through the clew and back to the boom end for an additional 2:1 purchase (compounding to produce 12:1 total). It also has a soft shackle for easy removal.
Setting the tack
The tack side of the reef is set with a much more traditional system. After the halyard is eased to a color-coded mark, the corresponding color-coded tack strap is hooked to the reef hook above the gooseneck.
The straps run through grommets and have enough slack that they can be pulled through to either side of the sail. This allows the reef to be set from either side of the mast.
Full reefing procedure
As a primarily singlehanded sailor, I need to plan every maneuver carefully. Every time I set a reef I follow these steps, so I only need to leave the cockpit once:
- Set the autopilot to hold course.
- Ease the mainsheet to luff the mainsail.
- Release the tension on the reef if one is set (to reduce load on the luff track). The control line is long enough to run to the cockpit so I don't have to go forward for this.
-
Ease the main halyard until the color-coded mark reaches the clutch:
- First reef: green
- Second reef: red
- Third reef: blue
- Go forward to the mast and pull the sail down if necessary.
- Hook the corresponding color-coded reef strap to the gooseneck reef hook.
- Haul on the corresponding reef line until the spliced dyneema loop appears.
- Also pull the other reef lines through so there isn't excess slack.
- Unclip the purchase system and clip it to the new reef line's loop.
- Stuff the reef lines into the halyard bag at the mast.
- Return to the cockpit and tension the main halyard to tighten the luff.
- Tighten the reef line to set the foot and leech tension.
Review
After using this system for over a year, including an offshore Gulf Stream trip and winds ranging from 0 to 40 knots, I can confidently say it's reliable, effective, and easy to use. I can set or shake out a reef alone in my boat faster than our whole team can on many of the boats I race on. I find myself reefing much more frequently in my boat because it's so easy to do, which is great because Endeavour, with her masthead rig and large genoa, is somewhat over-canvassed in moderate breeze.
The only downside I've found so far is that there is a bit of a learning curve. When I have new crew on board, I have to teach them a system they've never seen before. I always try and practice the procedure at least once in calm conditions with any new crew (as would be prudent on any boat).
