Reduce, Gather or Replace the Sail

The spinnaker’s sock receives its cloth while the halyard still holds the head. Once the sail is inside, the container has done its job. A sail that must continue driving in stronger wind needs something more: a useful smaller surface, with attachments able to carry its remaining load.

Securing a smaller working sail, gathering an unloaded one and replacing it with another can use some of the same ropes, but each leaves a different assembly working above the deck.

Put the load on new corners

Look up the luff of a mainsail from its tack. At a selected height above that ordinary corner lies a second reinforced attachment: the reef tack. A corresponding attachment farther up the leech is the reef clew. Lower the sail until these can be secured near the boom. They become the forward and after corners of the smaller working surface, with unused cloth below them.

Each corner has a reef cringle, a reinforced eye through which a line or fastening can take the load. The ring or eye is only the immediate contact. Around it, a reef patch spreads the concentrated pull through added material into a wider area of sailcloth. A ring in an unsupported hole would concentrate the force at its edge; a suitably arranged patch and attachment distribute it. The radial reinforcement, layered corner patches and webbing already examined acquire another loaded location partway up the sail.

The reduced sail still pulls upwards and sideways at its corners. At the front, the reef tack must be restrained near the mast. At the back, the reef clew needs a pull down towards the boom and aft along it. Those components restrain the leech and tension the new working foot. The halyard holds the lowered head at its new height, while the mainsheet and boom control continue carrying reactions into the boat.

This is slab reefing: a lower portion of the sail becomes surplus cloth while a higher pair of corners establishes the working boundary. The resulting reefed sail remains set with less of its available area exposed. Its head is lower than before. The new foot is higher in the cloth, but secured near the boom; the whole unreduced sail has not simply moved upwards.

The change also explains why the old clew outhaul cannot do every job. Its pull still reaches the original clew, now below the working reef corner. A separate line must act on the new after attachment. Likewise, the Cunningham cringle and its lower-luff control belong to their particular reinforcement and route. Their existence does not identify them as the reef tack or its securing system.

Route the reef controls

A clew reef line pulls the new after corner into position. In Harken’s external arrangement, one end is secured at the boom; the line passes up through the leech reef cringle and down to a block on a slider farther aft along the boom. Hauling the continuing line draws the corner towards those lower contacts. Placing the after guide suitably behind the corner gives its pull an aft component as well as a downward one. The slider’s fastening passes the block reaction into the spar.

Such a line is a reef pennant, also written reef pendant. In this application the name belongs to the line drawing a working corner into place. Reef line and reefing line are broader names for the controls securing or tensioning the reduced sail. A reef tackle adds a purchase to haul the corner: a loaded block or cringle moves relative to the fixed leads as rope is drawn through them. The purchase exchanges line travel for effort, with friction at each contact. It remains distinct from a short tie around loose fabric.

At the mast, a metal reef hook can hold the forward reef cringle. The projecting hooked part is a reefing horn. A paired fitting with a curved hook on each side is commonly called a ram’s horn, or ramshorn. The cringle seats on the hook, the halyard tensions the luff above it, and the hook passes the corner’s pull into its mounting near the gooseneck. Its open shape makes retention depend on the working direction and arrangement. Some sails use a short webbing connection through the tack cringle with an additional ring on each side, allowing a ring to reach the hook without forcing the bulky sail corner sharply sideways.

David Pugh describes this hook-and-clew-pennant arrangement on his Contessa 26, Red Dragon. He changed from rolling the sail round the old boom, whose arrangement prevented using its kicking strap when reefed. The new system gave the tack a hooked attachment and the clew a separate downward-and-aft pull. That is a documented change on one boat, prompted by its particular fittings and control limits. Pugh’s first-hand account.

A rope can secure the front corner instead. A tack reef line leads from a lower attachment up through the luff reef cringle and back down to its control. Tension holds that corner down against the halyard. With an independently controlled clew line, this is two-line reefing: two corner controls for one reef. The Harken catalogue shows separate tack and clew routes returning through deck guides. Their separation allows each corner’s movement and tension to be managed through its own line.

Single-line reefing couples both corners to one control. Follow Harken’s 430 system from its secured after end. The line passes under the boom, up through the leech reef cringle, down through the after slider block and forward along the boom. An eye and mast-mounted block redirect it up through the luff reef cringle. It returns down the opposite side through a guide, then through mast-base and deck turns to its cleat.

Pulling the one tail draws in the rope serving both corners while the separately controlled halyard permits the head to descend. The two corners need not move equally at every instant: friction, geometry and the load on each affect where the available movement occurs. Harken 430, p. 7, and the catalogue’s separate-control comparison, p. 272.

One line reduces the number of separate control tails but adds coupling along the route. Separate lines give separate adjustment and more line management. Jiffy reefing is a name for a readily operated slab arrangement; the Catalina 36 manual, printed p. 24, explicitly uses jiffy and slab together. It does not make every jiffy system single-line. Nor do two installed clew lines necessarily make two-line reefing: they may serve different reef heights, with each front corner held by a hook. Count the controlled corners and follow each route.

Give the loose cloth a different job

Between the new corners, a reef band reinforces a strip across the sail at the selected reduction level. Small intermediate eyes may carry reef points, the short ties which gather the unused cloth. A traditional name for such a tie is nettle. The band supports these local attachments; its presence does not make every eye along the row equivalent to a reinforced working corner.

Tie a suitable loose-footed sail’s surplus cloth into a bundle below the new foot. The intermediate ties keep that material from hanging loose. The reef tack and clew, their cringles and their patches continue to carry the working corner loads. Pulling the ties tight enough to make them take those loads can tear their much smaller attachments. The distinction is between two real contacts: a loaded corner restrained by its reef gear, and loose cloth retained by a gathering tie. Carol Hasse’s mainsail construction account, pp. 5–8, follows that separation through rings, patches and ties.

A reef gasket also names a tie used in reefing or gathering, with its exact duty depending on the rig and source. The sail-training vessel Generał Zaruski’s 2022 handbook, p. 31, gives corner lashings and intermediate bindings separate steps and loads even where its vocabulary is broad. In our slab comparison, the gathering gasket encloses the surplus cloth; the named corner controls retain the working sail. Identify its attachment before deciding which force the word describes.

The sail’s construction makes those duties visible. An eyelet or a grommet in its eye sense reinforces an opening. A large corner ring or cringle offers a fastening contact, with webbing and a reinforcement patch spreading the force beyond it. A headboard still receives the halyard pull at the lowered head. Neither a row of small holes nor the mere presence of metal proves that an attachment can take a reef corner’s load.

The new working foot also crosses the sail above its original edge. The original footrope or boltrope, foot tape and folded hem still belong to the old foot below it; they have not automatically become reinforcement for the new boundary. Luff rope, luff tape, leech tape and the broader doubled edge treatment called tabling retain their own positions. A UV protection strip protects exposed stored cloth where fitted. Its environmental job does not make it a structural reef patch. The sailmaker must provide the required strength at the place where the shortened sail actually pulls.

Shape control consequently changes with the reef. The leech cord can restrain flutter in the available edge but cannot secure the new clew. The old outhaul acts on cloth below the reef unless the arrangement gives it another connection. A headsail’s altered clew height changes the sheet lead angle and the downward component obtained from its first guide; its sheeting angle in plan remains a separate description. Stay sag, including headstay sag, still describes a curved support, whereas sail draft describes the membrane’s depth. Changing area does not abolish either distinction. The useful control settings belong to the new geometry.

A gaff sail adds the moving upper spar to this change. Throat and peak halyards must allow the gaff and its sail to reach their reduced working height; the gaff vang still restrains the spar in its own direction. A separate topsail can come down on its own halyard. Removing that extra sail changes the inventory; reefing the mainsail changes a working boundary within one sail. Both can shorten the complete plan, and neither leaves the fore-and-aft force balance automatically unchanged.

The battened sail supplied another arrangement. Its lowered panels and spars form a sail bundle received by the forward lift and the specified after lifts or gatherer. Batten stagger leaves clearance for the sheet attachments in that stack. Batten downhauls and the yard downhaul help bring the members down against friction and wind. Their loads depend on their actual parrel and guide routes. With slackened sheets, the upper spars may also need their stated restraint against fan-up. The fabric between battens has become surplus, but the remaining panels still drive through the working spars and sheets. A stack supported by lifts and a slab held at new corner cringles reach reduced area by different load paths.

Depowering through trim changes the effect of the exposed surface; reefing changes how much of that surface remains working. The reduced plan can also lower the force centre, reduce heel and change the rudder correction needed to balance the boat. Those changes may recover useful motion when the larger sail had produced an inefficient state. They do not guarantee that less sail gives more speed: the benefit may instead be reduced load or improved control.

Roll a supported edge

Another way to collect cloth is to turn its support. A headstay furler rotates a headsail around the forward stay or a surrounding member. In Seldén’s Furlex 50S, that member is a furling foil: an assembled grooved extrusion around the wire forestay. The sail’s luff tape enters the groove, so rotation of the foil carries the attached leading edge with it. The wire retains its mast-supporting job inside.

At the bottom, the furling drum holds turns of the furling line. Pulling that line off the drum rotates the connected lower assembly and foil, wrapping sailcloth around the leading edge. The bearing permits the rotating parts to move relative to the fixed stay attachment while transmitting their loads. Drawing the sail out again with its sheet reverses the rotation and winds operating line back onto the drum.

At the head, a furling swivel separates the sail’s rotation from the halyard. Its lower attachment turns with the sail while its upper attachment remains connected to the hoisting line; the bearing carries the tension between them. Without that rotational separation and a suitable halyard lead, the hoist could wrap round the turning support. The drum provides rotation, the foil carries it along the attached edge, and the upper swivel permits the resulting movement without requiring the whole halyard to turn. Furlex 50S manual, assembly and sailing sections.

Wrap the entire sail and the result is a full furl: the cloth is gathered into its stowed state. Roller furling names this rolling method of gathering. Furling more generally can include gathering and securing a sail without a rotating foil, as the older yard and bowsprit arrangements already showed.

Leave part exposed on a system designed to carry it that way and the result can be roller reefing. The exposed portion must still have a usable shape and a supported load path. As more cloth collects round the luff, the leading-edge roll thickens and the clew moves towards it. The remaining cloth’s proportions and the sheet’s direction change. A sailmaker can build extra take-up thickness into selected parts of the luff so that a turn collects more cloth there and controls some of the remaining fullness. That compensation has limits; the result need not equal a sail originally cut to the smaller size.

Furling and reefing therefore describe different outcomes. A device capable of rolling all the cloth for storage is not, by that fact alone, suitable for carrying a partly exposed sail under sailing load. Furlex supplies a documented system intended for both uses. The flying-sail mechanisms we will compare next have their own limits. Seldén dates Furlex’s introduction to 1983; the developed package combines a continuous luff support, bearings, drum and matched sail construction, rather than establishing the invention date of every form of furling.

The mainsail can also have a rotating store. In in-mast furling, a vertical member inside or alongside the mast gathers the cloth from the luff. Seldén’s RB/RC system places the roll in a compartment behind the principal mast section. A lower line drive and gearing turn the internal luff extrusion. An upper swivel separates its rotation from the halyard. The clew outhaul pulls the sail out through the mast slot and along the boom. Head and tack remain on the vertical assembly while rotation changes how much cloth extends aft. The store’s width, the sail’s construction and an orderly entry into the slot constrain the arrangement. RB/RC Mk5, pp. 2–3 and 6–7.

In-boom furling places the roll horizontally. Leisure Furl’s Offshore system has a rotating shaft, or mandrel, supported on bearings within the boom. The sail’s foot boltrope enters its groove. A forward spool, shaft and universal joint transmit rotation to this member while the boom’s outer body stays in place. As the mandrel turns, the cloth winds down from its foot; the halyard lets the head descend and the luff travels through its mast feeder. Boom height matters to how the cloth enters. This system uses a topping lift to support and position the boom; the line runs from aloft to its outer end, a job we will follow below. Leisure Furl Offshore manual, pp. 4–12.

The in-mast store rolls from a vertical edge; the in-boom store rolls from a horizontal one. Their guides, bearings, sail attachments and moving controls consequently differ. Neither is simply an ordinary slab sail put into a smaller box, and the internal rotating mandrel differs from rolling cloth round an entire older boom. These are continuing choices among storage, shape control, friction, access and compatible sail construction.

Decide where the roll starts

A free-flying sail needs a way to transmit rotation along its otherwise unsupported leading region. An anti-torsion cable is designed to resist twisting along its length, so turning one end can turn the other. It also carries tension, but resistance to axial stretch alone would not establish useful resistance to twist. Cable construction and terminations must pass the torque as well as the tensile load.

In bottom-up furling, a lower drive turns the sail’s tack and winding begins at that end. Seldén’s CXr account shows a relatively flat code sail with the cable sewn into its luff, its head and tack connected to the end terminals. Rotation enters at the lower terminal and passes along the reinforced leading region as the cloth wraps. A sail with a suitably stiff luff panel can transmit the rotation without a separate sewn-in cable. Either arrangement depends on the sail and its connections having that torsional function. CXr manual, pp. 5–8 and 15.

A fuller sail may have a curved luff free of the cable. Seldén’s GX turns the cable from below, but the sail’s head is attached to its rotating upper end. The tack connects to a freely turning lower ring, the tack swivel. The cable can therefore turn the head before the tack follows. This is top-down furling: wrapping begins at the head and progresses down the free cloth. The upper halyard swivel isolates this rotation from the hoist, while the independent lower tack connection permits the different movement needed at the foot.

The GX’s optional adjustable tack swivel also moves along the cable. The sail attaches to its upper ring; a control attached to the lower ring leads through a separate deck block behind the furler and aft. That line sets tack height while the rotating ring retains tack freedom. Its deck block redirects a height-control pull. It is separate from the drive which turns the cable. GX, pp. 2 and 4, and its adjustable tack swivel.

The drive can use an endless rope. A continuous-line furler has a closed operating loop running around a gripping wheel, with both stretches led back towards the crew. Pulling one stretch turns the wheel as the other returns. The rope circulates instead of accumulating as stored turns on the conventional headsail drum. The stationary body and its bow attachment receive the drive’s reaction; the cable and terminals receive its rotation.

Continuous-line describes the operating rope. Top-down and bottom-up describe where the sail starts wrapping. A continuous loop can drive either arrangement. Both still need suitable cable tension, clear line routes and restraint against unintended deployment. The existence of a partly completed roll does not make either particular flying-sail system a working reef.

Compare this with the sock and chute. The sock’s mouth moves over the cloth; the chute receives cloth pulled to its opening. Here the sail is wrapped through torque transmitted along a support. Each method controls the surface through a different contact, and each must still manage the sail’s aerodynamic load while it changes state.

Catch the lowered sail

A mainsail lowered without rolling needs somewhere to land. Its lazyjacks are a group of lines arranged on both sides above the boom to receive and contain the cloth. In Seldén’s simple system, an upper line descends from the mast to a hanging block. A lower line runs from a forward boom attachment through that block and towards an after boom attachment, with a corresponding route on the other side. The separated branches form a cradle alongside the descending sail. The lower attachments receive the branch pulls while the upper connection transfers the gathered load to the mast. Seldén’s lazyjack assembly, pp. 1–2.

To flake a sail is to lay it in orderly folds. A lowered mainsail can settle in alternating folds over the boom between the lazyjacks. Its luff slides or slugs descend in their groove; a ball-bearing car system instead rolls on its track. Either must have clearance for the resulting stack. Mast hoops on the earlier gaff sail similarly travel down the mast, while sail lacing remains an attachment to its designated spar or edge. These contacts keep the sail associated with the rig while allowing its supported geometry to change.

Lowering, or striking, the sail need not unbend it. To bend on a sail is to attach it for use; to unbend it is to detach those connections. A sail can remain bent on while lowered and stowed, ready to hoist again. Setting it also requires its working corners and controls to establish the intended surface. This difference matters when a cover conceals a folded sail: storage does not tell us whether its hoist, slides and corner connections are still prepared.

A topping lift supports the boom’s outer end from aloft when the sail no longer carries its weight. Tension in the line gives an upward component at that outer attachment; the masthead region receives the opposite reaction. An adjustable lower control changes the supported height. A suitable rigid vang can provide a different upward support through compression beneath the boom. The particular lazyjack installation cannot be assumed to carry the boom simply because it catches cloth.

The battened rig previously described has lifts designed to support its heavy bundle of spars and sail. Doyle’s StackPack manual, by contrast, expressly requires separate boom support and excludes the dynamic load of a dropping boom from its lazyjacks’ job. Their similar-looking lines must be read according to what their attachments and construction are intended to carry.

A standing lift gives the fixed-in-use spar-supporting comparison. Steel’s 1794 spritsail-yard arrangement has one end lashed to the yard and the other set up by a lanyard to a strap on the bowsprit. Once adjusted, its length supports the yard without a running control tail being hauled during use. Steel separately describes running lifts led through blocks for adjustment. The installation lanyard permits initial setting; it does not make that standing lift equivalent to the adjustable boom-height control just followed. Steel, “Spritsail-yard”, printed p. 196.

A lazy bag, often called a stack pack, combines a boom-mounted cover with the gathering arrangement. Doyle’s particular StackPack integrates a full-batten sail, supporting cover battens and adjustable lazyjacks. The lines hold the cover’s sides ready to receive the sail; after lowering, the cover closes over the folds. The cloth can remain attached to the boom while protected in that enclosure. Doyle records delivering its first StackPacks in 1989, a dated integration of sail, containment and cover rather than an invention date for every lazyjack. Doyle’s product account and manual, printed pp. 2 and 9–11.

Brails offer the earlier active-gathering comparison. Hauling the brail line draws its attached cloth towards the supporting spar; brailing names that action. A downhaul, including a tack downhaul where attached to the forward corner, pulls its particular attachment down. Lazyjacks chiefly receive the descending sail. These can cooperate, but a line gathering an edge, a line pulling a corner and a cradle containing a bundle have different contacts and movements.

Secure the bundle and the loose lines

A gasket, in sail handling, is a tie securing the gathered sail to its spar. Wrapping the cloth makes a compact bundle; the gasket retains it there. This sail tie has a different job from a sealing gasket between machinery parts. A 1903 photograph of Reliance records crew gathering the jib along her bowsprit: cloth and people occupy the narrow support together. The Library of Congress record identifies that manual furling work, a task which a supported roll later reorganises.

The familiar knots now meet a bundle that can shake, settle and become wet. A reef knot binds the tie ends around the cloth; the loaded reef controls remain attached to their reinforced corners. Successive marline hitches can retain a rolled length at several places. The useful binding must both stay put and release when the cloth is wanted again. A constrictor’s persistent grip would make that second job harder.

Lowering also changes the conditions at temporary attachments. A hitch which held under a steady directional pull may loosen when its line falls slack, or meet a different pull as the spar settles. Keep the actual ropework from the connection chapter in mind: support, free-end retention and loading direction remain part of its security. A buntline hitch can retain its small attachment through repeated load while becoming difficult to untie; a readily released bundle tie serves a different duty.

Loose control ends must remain recoverable for the next hoist. A figure-eight or stevedore stopper can keep an end from escaping a suitably smaller guide, but its position must leave the required travel available. Meanwhile the gasket should contain cloth without being tightened into it as though it were a hauling purchase. The connection’s usefulness follows from the movement it retains or permits in this stowed state.

Stowing the sail leaves its cloth contained and its unused lines managed. It does not remove the boom’s weight or the boat’s motion. A slack line suddenly arresting a moving spar can receive a shock load far beyond the gentle pull suggested by its resting position. The support for the spar, the ties around the cloth and the route available for the next hoist therefore remain separate parts of the complete stowed state.

Set a sail made smaller

Some conditions justify a separate, robust sail designed for the reduced role. A storm jib is a small, strongly built forward sail intended to retain useful control in severe conditions. Its original cut and reinforcement suit that smaller area. This differs from asking the exposed remnant of a large roller sail to preserve a useful shape after many turns have accumulated at its luff.

On the Navy 44, the storm jib hanks onto the deployed inner forestay. Running backstays support that stay’s mast attachment. The boat reuses its spinnaker-pole topping lift as the storm-jib halyard, with its route now lifting the sail’s head. The tack is retained forward, and the sheets use the smaller working jibs’ leads for upwind use or an outboard block on the toe rail, the low raised strip along the deck edge, for the stated reaching arrangement. The new sail has its own corner loads, passed into available supports. Those particular supports let the smaller sail work independently of the ordinary jib.

Storm staysail usually identifies the small robust sail carried on an inner or staysail stay. Carol Hasse distinguishes that from a storm jib on the headstay or a solent stay. The Navy manual calls its inner-stay sail a storm jib. These conventions overlap. Reading the named stay, hoist and sheet route gives a firmer understanding than assuming the label fixes every attachment. Smyth’s 1867 spitfire-jib, often shortened to spitfire, was a small heavy-canvas storm jib associated with cutters. That dated name supplies no universal modern dimensions. Navy 44, printed pp. 6-3–6-4; Hasse, “Setting Storm Sails”; Smyth, “Spitfire-jib”.

A storm trysail replaces the ordinary mainsail with a separate small, strongly built sail. In the Navy arrangement its slides use a dedicated track on the port side of the mast. The main halyard hoists its head after the mainsail has been lowered. A tack line reaches a mast padeye below the trysail track, retaining the forward lower corner. Two sheets lead from its clew through stern-quarter blocks to mainsheet winches. The boom is separately secured; it is outside this sail’s clew-control route.

Hasse describes a different preparation in which a spare or dedicated halyard lets the trysail be set before lowering the mainsail. Her tack pendant raises its foot clear of the bundled main, and her sheet lead clears that bundle, the boom, topping lift and lazyjacks on its way to an after block. That hoisting order requires the separate halyard. Combining it with the Navy boat’s already occupied main halyard would create a connection the stated boat did not have.

Here trysail means the reduced storm replacement. The snow’s historical trysail on a separate small mast behind its mainmast was another supported fore-and-aft working sail, with its own gaff and, in the chosen example, boom. That earlier trysail mast solved support and clearance beside square-rig machinery. Our storm sail instead travels on a track beside the present mast and is sheeted independently of the lowered main boom. The shared word requires its attachment and purpose to be specified.

Shortening sail thus includes changing the inventory as well as reefing within one surface. In the numbered headsail wardrobe discussed earlier, exchanging a No. 1 jib for a smaller No. 2 or No. 3 changes the sail at the foretriangle. A storm sail’s intended role, robust cut, reinforcement and suitable supports distinguish it from an ordinary smaller inventory jib; its size or number alone cannot establish that role. The storm trysail replaces the mainsail at the mast, a different position from the headsail exchange. A purpose-built small sail retains its own designed corners and cut; a slab reef uses prepared corners within a larger sail; suitable roller reefing leaves part of a designed rolling surface exposed. Each changes the total area and distribution of force. None promises a universal speed, balance or safe operating threshold.

Restore a support after damage

A smaller sail still needs something sound to hold it. If a mast is lost, changing from a mainsail to a trysail does not restore the missing upper attachment. A jury rig is a temporary sail or mast arrangement improvised after damage, rebuilding enough of that support to recover a limited capability.

Conrad Colman’s 2017 Vendée Globe provides a documented example. After dismasting, he retained lower mainsail cloth and recovered a damaged boom. He repaired and raised the boom as a substitute mast, adapted lines and cable into supporting rigging, secured its base and recut cloth for the lower structure. UK Sailmakers’ contemporary account describes this work; IMOCA’s finish report confirms that the resulting boom rig, reduced mainsail and storm jib brought the yacht to the finish. UK Sailmakers, February 2017, and IMOCA’s finish account.

The supported spare spar is the essential change. Cloth loads the improvised rig; its guys restrain the spar, while the secured base receives the remaining reaction. Those forces must reach sound parts of the surviving boat. That last statement follows from the load path, rather than identifying unseen terminals: the reports do not establish every guy fastening or the precise base connection. They support a repaired, braced structure, not a general set of dimensions or instructions for building one.

The substitute had far less height and sail-carrying capability than the original rig. Colman’s progress depended strongly on favourable following wind; reaching the finish did not restore the yacht’s normal all-course performance or establish a design margin for another boat. The case shows what a jury rig changes: the supporting structure as well as the sail area.

We can now follow a reduced corner into its hook or line, a roll into its drive and bearings, loose cloth into its ties or container, and a replacement sail into its available hoist and sheets. The next change occurs while the boat is moving. Turning or trying to slow it alters the wind and water forces before the hull has lost its momentum, so even a well-chosen sail plan must pass through changing states.