Boat Plans And Patterns | Easier Reefing for ‘Pike’ – Part 2

Boat Plans And Patterns

Brian commented on yesterday’s article that he’s never been clear about reefing a spritsail.

I’ll try to explain how I reef ‘Pike’s’ sail.

The objective of the exercise is to reduce sail area and to make the centre of effort as low as possible.

It would be feasible to reef the sail by moving the tack line to the luff reef cringle and re-tension it. Then, roll up the lower part of the sail and secure the bundle with the reef lines. The sprit would remain as it was before. The sheet block at the clew would not need to be moved because it would be held in place by the leech reefing lines. However, by reefing in this manner, the centre of effort would be raised and the sheet would not line up with the throat; therefore it would be impossible to make the sail set without having creases in it.

The proper way to reef ‘Pike’ is to move the sail down the mast by lowering the halyard and the sprit. To lower the sprit, the snotter must to be refastened to the mast lower down. The reefing procedure would otherwise be as described above.

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Boat Plans Skiff | Easier Reefing for ‘Pike’

Boat Plans Skiff

I replaced the throat toggle with a strong loop of rope

The full sail laid out

The reefed sail

‘Pike’ has a single spritsail. Iain Oughtred originally designed her without a boom, but one of her owners thought better, and added one. This complicated the reefing process, because a block that was attached to the mast for the boom snotter prevented two of the luff toggles from sliding down the mast. To reef the sail I had to lower the throat of the sail from the full sail position to a point below it equal to the depth of the reef; while doing so I had to release the luff toggles and replace them when the sail had been lowered. To make matters worse, there were two fairleads screwed to the mast. Now that I have removed them and the boom snotter block, the sail can rapidly be lowered to the reefing position for tying in the reef points. The sprit snotter can then be adjusted to put a fair strain on the sail so that it sets properly, and away you go!

Having removed the boom and its associated snotter block, the rig has been restored to the original design. I’m a lot happier with it, because I can quickly put in a reef when required.

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