In the other thread "camber and induced drag", I've been recently writing about my thoughts to further simplify the rig by removing HK parrels and the THP.

After yesterday, I do need to rethink!

We've been steaming along, dead running, at 7.3 kn for some dozens minutes. That is 1.0 kn above hull speed. It felt well under control, Ilvy behaved as usual. I constantly checked bending of batten #3, but is was fine, I've seen it bend worse. All was good - and fun!

Being close to a windward shore, the sea was perfectly flat. The opposite of what the topic of this thread describes. Approaching a narrow buoyed seaway, we reefed to slow down. The sail came down a bit: the upper battens and yard went down, but the lower ones not so much. The sail "folded" over it's entire height. It was not a bad thing, still able to be sheeted as normal. But still, not properly reefed. I repeat: though we've been fast as h***, there was barely any roll movement in the boat - and no waves. This, combined with a LOT of pressure in the sail, finally illustrated the limits of easy reefing. Normally, the waves and rolling motion of Ilvy would have brought the sail down rather quickly! 

We used YHP and THP to bring the sail down to the designated reef: pulling and let go of those two, one by one after each other for several times did the trick. I was glad to still have the THP.!

That was a rather special occasion, and wouldn't have happened if we didn't push Ilvy that far to the limits. Anyways, I am healed now about wishing to omit the THP. To handle that one more line is a compromise I could live with - until someone comes up with a better concept.

Cheers,

Paul

This looks like an excellent innovation!  I shall try it myself.

Experience with yard parrel

I put on the yard parrel from 20 % to 57 % chord on the yard. Just lashed it there, and tightened it as far as possible whith the sail bundle all down – thus the mast most forward on the yard, which gives the 20 % value on Ilvy.

When the yard is raised, the mast moves aft on it – on that position I fixed the aft end of the yard parrel (57 % on Ilvy). See the following sketch:

The further the yard is raised, the more slack the yard parrel gets due to the taper of the mast. In reality, it looks like this:

We’ve been putting on the test, yesterday, sailing from Rödvig to Nyord in an easterly F6. This meant sailing into a lee shore, with water depths reducing from 15 m to 2.5 m. You can imagine how choppy the sea got… We’ve been reefing quite a lot, also deep reefing to two and even one panel (to reduce speed while entering the narrow entrance with wind from behind. Scary!) All in all, perfect conditions to test that yard parrel to the guts in a choppy sea.

It performed very well! The movement of the upper sail in direction of the yard was limited by the attachment points of the yard parrel. There still was movement, as 20 - 57 % is a wide range. However, it was way less than before. Most important: the danger of the yard moving too far forward and entangle in the lazy jack lines is reduced a lot. The sail just could not go any further forward than the halyard sling point thanks to the yard parrel. Also, in normal direction to the sail, the yard was held more closer to the mast (on starboard tack) than before. Really an improvement!

It was not a wee bit harder to hoist the sail, as the yard parrel is slack most of the time. Also, when YHP and THP are sheeted in to the correct position the yard parrel is slack. It is really only under tension, when YHP and THP are thrown loose to reef or hoist.