Thanks for all the great replies.
Regarding the set of the sails, that is unfortunate. If there's one thing that I think everyone on this board will agree on, it's the pride of coming in, knowing your sails are set perfectly and your little boat, even if only for another 20 minutes, is bristol fashion, and you really are best sailor you can be. Issues of pride aside, I can't see that sail shape being good for the sails in any of the conditions I'd bother to reef in. It looks like the leech would get beaten to a pulp rather sooner than I or my pocketbook would like. Then again, I've never had reefable jibs, and despite having a huge inventory of sails for such a small boat, if the conditions got too hairy for whatever sail I'd hanked on earlier, I'd generally just drop the jib and run under main alone, which seemed to work fine for me. Once again, I've never been a real racer type.
The last boat I owned I single handed often enough, and I was hanked on. It was definitely doable, but it meant spending time outside the harbor dropping my jib and sailing in slower so that I wouldn't be going forward inside a busy harbor to drop it. Then again, it was also a small boat, and I didn't have a downhaul, and even with one, I think you'd still need to run up to wrap up the sail and stop it from blowing all over the place, no?
Thanks again.
-- James