As you may know I had to buy a new mainsail since the last one started tearing apart a year ago (it must have been at least 20 years old).

This has been a process with lots of stumble blocks (like most things with boats). The full sail looks amazing but reefing is a problem with the spray-hood up. The boom drops onto it and it is very difficult to tighten the reefpoint close to the boom so I had to lower the spray-hood. And in general when you have to reef the main sail, this is because it is windy and wet and you want some protection from the elements at the helm.

For the land lubbers out there: what does reefing the main sail mean? It is the process of reducing the the surface area of the main sail so the boat is not overpowered, it is the sailing equivalent of depressing the gas throttle but it is a bit elaborate and not as quick. Here is a nice article that tells you how it is done on my boat. I have 3 reefing points so I can use the main sail in terrible weather.

Also the cars are attached to the main sail with some flimsy plastic bits and tiny screws that just don’t work. The sailmaker promised to replace these:

Since I want the boat to be ready for single-handed sailing, I also bought a new sail cover with the lazyjack bag system which will look like this:

I can’t go up the mast yet but I did fit the bag. There are a few issues but at the moment it looks quite nice:

But the spray-hood is a problem again. Now I need to wrap a sail tie around the area to prevent chafing underway. I think I need to lower the spray-hood by cutting off a couple of centimetres of the hoop:

Incidentally, this is with the first reef properly set up!

P.S. Lazy bags image stolen from: www.sailmagazine.com/diy/lazyj…