If I am going to sail with just a single sail up I choose depending on where the wind is.
If sailing upwind I will use just the main. Tacking is really easy since it is essentially self tending and I can point pretty high into the wind with my boat. I have tried upwind with just the
jib and while it worked the wind pushed the bow downwind pretty bad. I also found tacking was much harder due to this effect, took longer to recover from the turn and get on the new tack.
If sailing downwind and there is enough consistent wind to keep the sail filled will just use the
jib.
I have seen this discussed a few times and the consensus seems to be there is no damage that can be done to the
rig. The biggest consideration is what gives the most efficient performance.