Ellen MacArthur wrote:
"Jeff" wrote
Are you seriously saying that people that only have one large sail, often with a large heavy boom, find it easier to
gybe in heavy air than to tack? I am at a loss for words!

The boom is very long and heavy and there's another one on top of the sail. But, if you ever
sailed one in heavy winds you'd know that jibing them is easy. It's easy because the boom on top
called the gaff boom blows the top part of the sail well forward. The main boom is held back by the
sheets. So when you wear ship you slowly tighten up on the sheet till it's almost centered but the gaff
boom keeps the top of the sail downwind. When you go through the eye, no that's not right, what's the
opposite of the eye? The tail of the wind? No that's not right either. Whatever, when you start to go
around on the other tack the gaff boom just swings across to the other side real easy like. Then you
can ease the mainsheet.
If your gonna get a cat boat you'd better learn how to do this....

All you're saying here is that there's a chance that you might be able
to gybe in heavy air without destroying the boat. But anyone skilled
enough to do that would have no trouble at all tacking. However, it
is quite a lot of work hauling the doubled mainsheet, and all the
while you're doing this the boat is unbalanced and trying to head up.

Of course, gybing to avoid tacking is particularly stupid if you're
trying to get upwind.

As it turns out, many is the time I've done a "chicken gybe" by
tacking rather than gybing a catboats - muck less stress on the boat
and crew. And I don't recall ever getting stuck in irons.

And the proper spelling is "ware ship."