A lot of us who have others aboard are just about single handing anyway. The solutions that work for a couple on a big boat will probably work for a single hander on a smaller boat. For that reason I would add to the excellent literature review provied above and suggest you look at Steve and Linda Dashew''s cruising encyclopedia. Dont feel like you have to be as wealthy as they are to learn from their book. There are tons of inexpensive soltuions to common problems burried in the book. The two of them sail a 70 footer.
I put
lazy jacks on my norsea 27 before I headed out to Hawaii a few years ago on a single handed crossing. After the second night I cut the
lazy jacks off the boat. one of the nettles (little
lines that hold the bunched up reefed sail up to the boom) tied it self in an incredibly complex knot in 35 kts of wind, at night.
I never saw much benefit to the
lazy jacks on my full batten main...all I had to do to get the sail under control when it came down was pull the lowest batten parallel to the top of the boom and get a gasket (sail tie) on it.
My new boat is much bigger and I let the dealer put
lazy jacks on it but think Im going to take them off this boat too. They are something else to go wrong and the little blocks in them bang agains the mast when they are retracted while sailing. This requires two additional shock cord ties...more and more stuff to deal with when you want to use the
lazy jacks...
Just figure out a way to get the main furled quickly and forget the
lazy jacks.
The Dole stack pack in another matter. That seems to work very well but is not cheap.