[jbr]

Thanks, again, eveyone for your great input. In regards to hiking out, I wish I could do this more effectively (in appropritate aka non-extreme conditions) but it may acutally be dangerous in my boat (Hunter 170) since there are no hiking straps and sitting on the gunwale one couln''t even reach the toerail (your feet would be on the cockpit seats with nothing to allow you to lever out against). Also, Sailormon6, I want to thank you for the clarity of your thinking regarding a strategy for reducing sail area on a dinghy. Just brilliant! My rig is fractional with roller furling jib. It sounds like in these conditions you would first roll the jib completely, asses heel, and if not severe, reef the main and partially unfurl the jib. If heel was still excessive you would drop the main and seek shelter under reefed jib. However, I''ve heard that fractionally rigged dinghys such as mine may not be able to tack under jib alone whereas they can with main alone (assuming you''ve not yet past the "point of being totally overpowered"). So my question to you is: have you found that on dinghys such as mine when moderately overpowered and needing to seek shelter under one reefed sail that you could tack with jib alone? Related: if you can partially roll the jib, why would you prefer reefed jib alone to reefed main alone (ie, is it because you can generally reef to a smaller sail area than the reefed main which imposes limits on how much you can reef)? One last related question (a bit off the wall!): I''ve noticed that in high winds my boat is blown around significantly even with the jib furled and the main tied to the mast. This is due in part to the high gunwales and light weight of my boat and to the fact that when the main is quickly lashed to the boom it''s never perfectly flaked and there is still some surface area exposed to the wind. So, my question is: it has occured to me that it might be possible in these circumstances to "trim the boom" (ie, with main lashed to it) as the ultimate reef and try to sail the boat to shelter (ie, if my motor was inoperable). I doubt I could tack but the boat might be somewhat sailable from a "close" beam reach to a run? Have you ever heard of this working? Caveat: probably wouldn''t work in a heavier boat or in huge waves. Anyway, thanks again for the excellent advice.