I was surprised once again how quickly the BSD rig sets up. It really is a clean efficient design. On the other hand, I had a lot of trouble getting the battens to reverse position when the sail was reefed at 22 sq. ft.. I had to use the canoe paddle every time I came about to push the battens to the other side. I did loosen the tie downs on the leach of the sail and that helped a bit. Looking at the video it appears that I may not have had the downhaul pulled tight enough... but the sail does get pretty thick in the section where it's folded over on itself twice. It made me think of trying the sail without the battens if I know I'm going to stay reefed. Opened up, the battens seem to switch pretty easily, but honestly, I didn't spend a lot of time looking up when I had the full sail catching wind. Looking up (when not moving) at that huge sail spurred an immediate sense of vertigo in the narrow boat... ha, I didn't do it very often. The two times I could have looked up when I was actually sailing... I didn't think about it.
Here's a 'save' that I pulled from the video with the sail reefed to 22 sq. ft.. The fully reefed sail seemed a lot jerkier in the gusty wind, there is no doubt in my mind that had I not been on the upper edge of the coaming when this gust hit I would have gone over. As it was I came pretty darned close. Look at that leeboard, cool.

Of note: 1) Much to my surprise I discovered the fully reefed sail to be a little calmer when I raised it high enough to clear my head (while sitting on the coaming). 2) The full 36' sail seemed to allow wind to bleed out of the top almost identically to the way the Kayaksailor does. This may be a natural effect of the batwing. I noticed it at both the 30' reefing and the full 36. I didn't see the 22' reefing dump that much wind out of the top.
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