Quote Originally Posted by pogen View Post
This guy makes it look pretty easy without all these extra lines and bother. Not sure what all the big deal is about this singlehanding anyway!
I want to see him drag the no. 4 on deck and do sail change - that was the limiting factor for me on boat size: what's the biggest sail I can drag on deck, and decided the SC 50 spinnaker was the limit. Conveniently, Beetle has sails just slightly smaller than the SC 50.

I'm a fan of ATN socks, I had them on the Newport 33 and they worked great for me. I tried various configurations, including lengthening the sock line to lead it through blocks on the foredeck all the way back to the cockpit - decided that was more trouble than it was worth as I always had to go to the foredeck anyway to lower and retrieve the sail once it was socked.

I also ran double-poles for the gybe for a while, and decided that was more trouble than it was worth. Simpler to do a flying jibe in less than 15 knots of breeze, and easier to pull the sock part-way down and then jibe the single pole and then pull the sock back up. So I simply kept the second pole as a backup for use after breaking the first one (which I did with regularity).

- rob/beetle