Other sailors are often surprised that Phyllis and I set, reef, and strike our 56′ McCurdy & Rhodes cutter’s 600-square-foot mainsail without resorting to complex gear like roller furling masts or booms.
But, actually, it’s pretty easy using the simple gear that we have installed and fine tuned over 22 years and well over 100,000 miles.
Setup
The core of our system is our lazyjacks. In my opinion, any boat over about 45 feet that will be sailed shorthanded needs lazyjacks. Having said that, many of the systems we see out there are way too complicated. Here’s all you need: