Foot of main when reefed?

[bobmcgov]

We use ball bungees rather than velcro, but same theory. Enuf strength to keep your flaked foot tidy, not enuf to damage the sail. A million&one uses aboard a sailboat!

We keep them looped around the grab handle on the companionway hatch, so once the jiffy reef is in we can thread them at our leisure. They tend to die quickly in sunlight and cold weather, tho.

[JohnRPollard]

Originally Posted by svHyLyte

.... Many years ago we made a trip to Catalina when it was blowing like stink and so had our main well reefed and the bunt secured with 1/4" line. We arrived late, tired and cold and so dropped the sail, covered it and promptly went to bed. Upon leaving, 5 daze later, I forgot that the nettles were still in place and lamely cranked away with our halyard winch until I heard a terrible "R-I-P-P-P!" at which point I remembered the nettles....

That's exactly the kind of "human error" I was referring to. We've come close to doing that on our boat, and I've actually seen it done on another.

We just use our sail ties (aka gaskets), snugged only enough to contain the sail and keep it from flapping and restricting visibility. Not tight. And above the boom provides a lot of extra "give".

Something with elasticity like Bob M mentioned or your velcro would be nice -- maybe some day when we need some new sail ties I'll look at that.

[svHyLyte]

Originally Posted by Bene505

svHyLyte,

Any chance you have a picture of your velcro setup? Do you use one long piece of velcro or is the velcro attached to a length of line?

Brad--

At one point I had 1/4" lines sewed to velcro tails but the velcro didn't like constant exposure to the sun. Now I just have a handfull of black "One Wraps" (i.e. double sided velcro) that live in a little bag in a cubby in our cockpit combing. I take a couple forward with me when I set the reefs. It can be a bit of a pain in the neck to poke them thru the sail but they're only 1/2" wide so it goes pretty quickly and one only needs two or three so it's not that difficult. Moreover, we always reef as soon as we start to think about it so, usually, the conditions aren't particularly demanding. Also, I use black so that the ties are very obvious when it's time to shake out the reef.

FWIW...