[jbr]

I''m sailing a Hunter 170; its a nice planing dinghy but is a light boat with a lot of freeboard so it gets blown around in higher winds even with sails down. The headsail is about half the size of the main and since it has a furling jib I can partially reef it. I''ll try this approach and appreciate the suggestion; two questions though: 1) how much do you trim your jib prior to backing it?, 2) if the boat ends up almost abeam when hove to I would think the battens would still hang up on the shrouds when raising/lowering/reefing (I have swept back spreaders). I do have two line reefing but it wouldn''t be easy to reconfigure for cockpit control (would be nice...).