Reefing

Reefing is the act of reducing the sail area of a single sail by rolling or tying up a portion of it. Alternatively, this can be called shortening sail but this term may also imply the removing of sails, or exchanging sails for smaller sails in the same location.

Different sails are reefed in different ways. Fore and aft sails that are carried on a boom are reefed down to the boom. Additional strong points are made in the sail's fore-and-aft edge, to secure the clew and tack points to the boom, so that the whole sail lowers down a distance. Inbetween those two strong points is often a band of tacks or cringles. Strings or holes. Used to bundle up and secure the excess sail material against the boom. Sails have two maximum three of these reefs to make it smaller.

Head sails, if they reef, reef in a similar way. But they are much more often taken down all together, or replaced by a smaller version of the same sail. If they are reefed, the sail is lowered a bit, and the excess sail bound to the sail's own foot rope, as there is no boom to tie it too.

Sails on yards have to be reefed upwards, as the sails hang down from the yards. Gravity cannot help here. The crew has to go up and spread out along the yard, and all together pull the sail up a bit until the reefing line comes level with the yard and then tie off the sail at this new height.

It is understandable that reefing sails on yards is a hard and dangerous job, and with ships growing bigger and bigger, and the sail size following. Sails on yards began to be split in upper and lower versions. And grew from three to eight different sails all above each other. At that point, sails weren't reefed anymore, but hoisted or taken down completely. To regulate the amount of sail area that was displayed.

Alternatively, sails can be rolled. Modern yachts feature this option a lot. The headsails get rolled around the forestay. And the mainsail gets rolled into the mast, or into the boom.

Sunset Dawn

The forward sails of the Sunset Dawn(flyer, the two jibs and the staysail) don't have reefing lines. They are one by one taken down to deck when less sail area is required.

Of the sails on the yards the fore sail has a bonnet connected to it's foot that can be removed. Otherwise only the Lower topsail and lower topgallant have a reefing line each. The upper topsail and upper topgallant can only bet set fully or removed completly.

The staysail between the fore and main mast don't have reefing options either, they get taken down when less sail area is required.

The main and mizzen both have three reefing lines. At 10%, 25% and 55% of the height, measured from the foot up.

Narwhal

The Narwhal does have one reefing line it its boomed staysail. The inner and outer jib have to be taken down completely and replaced by a smaller or bigger version when the need requires.

Both the main and the mizzen sail have two reefing lines at 20% and 50% of the height.

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