This was not the intended use of the balance lugsail when we built it for Paul Reynolds. But necessity is the mother of invention. “Top down emergency reefing” is a great idea in an emergency to truly reduce the sail area.
This is important because on the Texas200 RAID event most of the route is very isolated with no locations to drop out of the event. There’s no water for much of the course either, so a lot has to be carried and rescue is “if you sail in … you can sail out”.
FROM PAUL Reynolds on Penobscot 14 – shorter masted at this point.
After breaking mast 2x, and extraordinary help from Thompsons, and the Pathfinder crew, who are following, I think I’m ready to try again.
Near marker #9.
This type of reefing is not meant to be a regular thing. First or second reef can be used producing a squaresail that centres over the centreboard or leeboard a lot better than a deeply reefed mainsail on most boats.
So a “top down emergency reef” when the mast is compromised or just want a tiny scrap of sail area for the crazy wind conditions makes a lot of sense.