Tom Cunliffe

TOM CUNLIFFE – A SAILOR TO THE CORE
Sometimes I am amazed by my own blog! Today, for example, I discovered the latest video from Tom on the net, in which he explains wonderfully catchy – and sailing in Danish waters! – explains how beautifully a horizontally reefed mainsail works if you only mount the “right” system and are willing and able to handle it “sensitively”.

And there I remember, quite like the pearls of a chain, the old stories: Have we not all dealt at that time with a so-called people’s hit, where, with worm drive or in the 1:1 transmission the mainsail wound up around the boom, where it more or less full of wrinkles, then with slightly deteriorated sail position could perform its service only imperfectly? After all: Reefing was quick, the bad sail trim was “accepted” … silently or less silently accepted. This system was optimized about 40 years ago in France. I remember father and son Lei, whose “lei systems” fore and main sails furled, the latter having to be inserted into a wedge-shaped second göhl behind the mast. This system was optmized in the U.S. under the Forespar brand as Leisure furl and has since been used on about 4,000 ships of all sizes. John Kretschmer explains the system on the following video:

The circle closes when one learns that Tom Cunliffe’s Constance, a Mason 44 purchased in Florida, is equipped with this exact Leisure furl system.

Tom Cunliffe – a sailor to the core