At what wind speeds should I consider reefing my H16? Adverage combined crew weight is usually around 325 - 350. Thanks for any and all help!
I can only tell you from my practical experience (ripping the hell out of an old Mainsail) that the more important question is the force of wind gusts. We used to reef our old (original) sails using the reefing grommets put there by Hobie. Perhaps our sails were a little sun bleached by then, but we found that steady wind, even if forceful, wasn't as much a problem reefing as massive sudden gusts encountered. At our large lake, we would reef with large (1ft.plus) whitecaps and heavy gusts over 25 nauts. But, we still ripped a hole large enough to jump through one Sunday on a 30-35 naut. gust out of the tunnels of hell. So, I my pocket book doesn't like reefing anymore. I would be interested to learn if Hobie has performance guidelines, or if we screwed up to cause the sail loss.