wrote in message
...
On Tue, 12 Aug 2003, "Donal" wrote:

. . . an in-mast furling main sail . . .

. . . which, comparatively speaking, might be used more of the time
than one that requires more work to hoist and take down, . . .

If health reasons made getting a sail up and down difficult, then I might
consider a furling main. As it is, I'm not sure that it takes any longer
to hoist. I use lazyjacks to drop my main into the sailbag. It only takes
about 3 mins to flake it out and zip up the bag. So I agree that taking the
sail down will take a bit longer. However, I find it difficult to accept
that anyone would forego the use of the main because it was too difficult to
hoist on any boat under 40'.




. . . will usually be considerably smaller
than a standard sail, due to the lack of roach.

As a general matter, this is often true (but compare some
vertically-battened moderen in-mast furling mains).

I haven't seen these. They sound like they might suffer from jamming.


But even when correct, it disregards the reality (especially for newer
computer-assisted designs) that modern hull shapes and (newer) boat
design/fabrication also frequently favors comparatively early reefing
but at no loss of sailing performance.

In other words, at many windspeeds and related weather conditions,
the,
"Is 'performance' always 'better'?"
question is often almost wholly (and, in some cases, entirely) moot.


The guy that I chartered the boat with a furling main from, said that the
furling system meant that he could always reef exactly by the amount that
he wanted, and therefore he could keep up more sail in heavy weather. I
found that the sail shape was dreadful, and that the boat wouldn't perform
well in any conditions. BTW, the boat was a Barvaria 44.



Regards


Donal
--