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The following 5 sail plans show how Trinovante
might reduce sail as the wind increases.
Depending
on wind direction and sea conditions other sail
combinations will often be used. Factors to be taken into consideration include,amongst other things, if the wind is increasing or decreasing, the abilities of the crew, if it's day or night, sea state, how keen or lazy the crew are feeling and when we want to get to our destination,there are no hard and fast rules. In practise unless we are racing we don't tend to do a lot of reefing we just drop whole sails
Sail Plan No1 This shows full sail set. We would carry this amount of sail off the wind up to around force 5. Hard on the wind we might remove the aft fishermans a little earlier when it tends to increase heel without giving any extra speed.
Sail Plan No 2 shows the aft fishermans is off and the mizzen has been reefed to improve balance. Often we just take the mizzen off at this stage and generally only bother to reef it if we are on the wind and want to keep as much sail on as possible. The boat is generally easier to tack with this sail combination if the mizzen is still set.
Sail Plan No3. Here the no1 Jib has been removed and the working jib set . The mizzen is fully off. Reducing the sail area forward balances up taking the mizzen fully off aft. However we often sail with the mizzen off and the no1 jib set and this works fine too if you are not expecting wind to keep increasing or if you are off the wind. It all depends how hard you want to push the boat.
Sail Plan No4 Now we are starting to be significantly reduced on the sail area .
Sail Plan No 5 Here the working jib is off too.Now all the sail area is low down and well within the boat. It means we don't have to go out on the bowsprit or work on the aft deck as the sea gets rougher.. It is now fairly straight forward to gradually reduce sail further by reefing the foresail and mainsail and stay sail or just dropping individual sails right until we get down to bare poles..
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