I guess it was that lovely wooden mast, the yard and boom that fooled me. I can see the battens are alloy now on closer inspection. You could paint them brown! Gybing still makes me a little nervous too but I will share my observations with you. I square the sail out as much as possible - because of some twist in the leech, the boom does not go out as far as the yard. I was nervous to let it out too far initially because PJR warns about compression loads on the battens if you go past 90 degrees, but now I keep easing the sheet until the top sheeted batten is fully athwartships, which means the yard is well and truly eased. This means that the sail wont gybe until you are sailing considerably by the lee and that makes the gybe a little softer. it also means an accidental gybe while running is unlikely unless there is an extreme and sudden shift in wind angle (which happened to me once under the old rig in the Whitsundays and nearly killed me). My main problem with gybing the junk sail all standing was that the sheet whipped across and once grabbed my windvane, another time the autopilot, both escaped without serious damage but I was lucky. It could be my neck next! So now I do a controlled gybe. I wear a pair of sailing gloves, hold the tiller with my knees and haul in as much sheet as I can, flaking it down between my feet on the cockpit floor. Then, as the boom passes over my head, I let the sheet run out through my gloved hands (which stops it getting a wrap around something like the engine gear lever!). I find this still quite soft, the friction in the sheet running out brakes the boom a little without it slamming and everything seems to be under control. I have gybed like this in 20 knots several times without mishap. Once I have two - three panels reefed down the process seems a lot less intimidating, as long as I have a lashing on the leech to stop a fan up. I reef early when sailing downwind as the sail is so efficient I just do not need to drive the boat as hard as I did under the bermudian rig. I always drop two panels when off the wind if the wind is 15 knots, three panels if it is 20 knots. With the wind forward of the beam I can carry full sail in 15 knots, one panel reefed at 20. I remember Annie Hill saying that junk rig was the opposite in this regard to bermudian (as in so many other ways), in that you had to shake reefs OUT when you came on the wind.
[Webmaster edit: Such a good post Graham, that I've started a new thread called 'Gybing a junk' in this forum. Could anyone who wants to reply to Graham do it there, please? Let's here how you all gybe.]