Dear Timothy,
I look at new weather forecasts at least twice each day, and so hopefully will have advanced warning of a big storm. With that, I can then prepare. I can take down and put away any really big sails that we may have up, and I can prepare the smaller sails that we will use in the storm. For the mainsail, we can make that sail smaller by putting in ‘reefs’, which essentially means we lower the sail by about 15 feet, and set that as a new sail. We have the ability to put 4 reefs into the mainsail, which would make it really small, for a very bad storm. If you go to our website, under Daily, you will see a page called Weather, and this will have direct web links to the same weather maps that I am using here on the boat.
Question from Timothy, FasTracKids Forteza Surabaya (Indonesia)
Putting the 4th reef in the main sail. Reefs 1, 2 and 3 can be done from the cockpit, but 4 must be done from the boom.