How To Sail: How To Furl A Genoa - Sailing Basics Video Series

Guys it is so nice to have a furling Genoa. Gone are the days where you had a whole bunch of different sail bags for different sails for different conditions. Now everything is on this furler and we can basically furl and unfurl as much sail as we want. Just today we had a passage down to this beautiful anchorage and when we started off it was about 14 knots of wind, steadily built up to about 22 knots. It was so nice from the safety of the cockpit to be able to just furl a little bit and reef a little bit of that Genoa. You don't have to send someone all the way up to the bow to do those sail changes. So we are huge fans of the furling Genoas. So today we're going to talk you guys through a couple of simple tricks and techniques, just things to help you furl and unfurl the Genoa on your sailboat. Now once you're ready to unfurl we find it's best to have your mainsail up and get to your point of sail. It's good to be between a close haul and a beam reach. You actually want to be off the wind so that the wind helps you unfurl that Genoa. If you have a couple people on board, ideally assign one person to be on your jib sheets and one person to be on the furling line. Just makes things a little bit easier. Person on the jib sheets, first thing they'll want to do is release the lazy jib sheet and prep the loaded side. To prep it, you just want one wrap around that winch. You don't want to do more than that as it has a tendency to override. Person on the furling line can go ahead and open up the rope clutch or take it off the winch or the cleat, however it's locked down. Person on the loaded jib sheet is going to start pulling and the person on the furling line is just keeping a little bit of tension on that line so that the line wraps up nicely around the furler. Really important that they keep just a little bit of tension on that because if you just let the furling line go it's going to get overrides and get wound up at the bottom of your furler. Once you've got the full sail out, the person on the furling line can lock off the rope clutch or get it cleated off. The person on the loaded jib sheet can go ahead, fill up the drum, take that line over the feeder through the jaws, put a winch handle in and start cranking down. Looking at the telltales to make sure they get good sail trim on their genoa. So there's a couple different approaches to furling your genoa. One of the ways is in lighter winds you can often just ease out on your loaded jib sheet and what that does is that depowers your genoa. Just let it out till it starts kind of luffing and flapping and often that's enough so the person on the furling line can pull in and just furl it. In stronger winds though or when you're reefing it's actually a good idea to go to a broad reach. What that does is that puts your genoa in the wind shadow of your mainsail. Makes it a lot easier to reef your genoa or to furl it if you've got high winds. You want to go ahead and furl your genoa. The person on the loaded jib sheet is just going to be easing that out and the person on the furling line is going to be pulling in. Really really important here that whenever you're dealing with the furling line and you're furling a genoa don't ever put that line around a winch. You always want to pull that line in by hand. The reason is right underneath the furler extrusion which is the tube that the genoa is on is our forestay. That is the cable that holds up the front of the mast. If you happen to have an override and that furling line was around a winch and you're cranking and cranking you can actually break your forestay and your mast will come crashing down. Not very common but it's just one of those things to think about. So be careful always furl your genoa by hand. Once the sail is halfway furled really important that the person on the loaded jib sheet keep just a little bit of tension on that line and on the sail and what this does is it helps your genoa just coil up nicely around the furler. You'll sometimes see in anchorages or at docks you'll see what we call candy caning where you can see the colored sunbrella on sails and then you can see the white of the sail inside. You never want to have candy caning. The reason that we have the colored sunbrella on the outside of our sail is to protect the sail from sun damage. So you want to make sure you keep a little bit of tension on your jib sheet so that that genoa furls up nicely. Once the sail is furled go ahead close the row clutch on the furling line or cleat it off. The last step just to wrap everything up, re-tension your jib sheets. These make great handholds when you go forward to anchor or whenever you want to go up to the bow. Thanks for watching. Be sure to subscribe and hit the bell so you'll be notified of future videos. Lots more great videos are in the works with all kinds of practical sailing tips. Be sure to check out the next video to continue learning from our basic sailing theories.