THE PRACTICAL TURTLE AND HANK ON JIBS

Just as some of us would rather shift their car manually to suit conditions, there are those of us who would rather set the jib best suited to conditions, especially in light and in heavy airs. However for the evening and weekend sailor, the time consumed dragging out the jib, hanking it on and bending on the sheets before sailing and the reverse upon mooring has encouraged many to consider roller furling who would otherwise rather stick with hanks.

Although nothing beats roller furling for providing quick and easy stowage of a headsail when preparing to moor your yacht, the use of practical turtle reduces the handling and stowage of a hanked on sail to a minimum. There is no fooling with hanks or sheets unless you actually want to change jibs.

To stow the jib using a practical turtle; attach the practical turtle at the jib tack, lower the jib, and pull out on the leech. (If it is windy you may want to tie two or three sail ties around the lowered jib.) Grab the loosely flanked sail 2/3 back from the tack and Z fold it. Zip up the turtle, and if you want to clear the fore deck, snap the jib halyard to the clew end of the turtle and hoist it off the deck. The Jib will live in its turtle, all hanked on, ready to go when you are.

The turtle can also be made the full length of the foot of the jib. A full length turtle is especially convenient on very large heavy sails.

The turtle is usually the same color sunbrella as the mainsail cover, providing a ship shape appearance when the yacht is put to bed. If you should want to remove the jib from the headstay in order to stow the sail below, there is no need to remove the turtle. Just unzip the front zipper, unhank the sail and rezip. The sail remains bagged in an oblong bag easy to pass through the hatch. It is much easier to remove and stow the jib in its Practical Turtle if you are leaving your yacht unattended for a while, than it is to remove a roller furling jib, especially if it is blowing when you are removing it.

For less than the cost of a typical 130% roller furling genoa, you can buy a hank on genoa with a Practical Turtle which will outlast and outperform the roller furling sail. As a compromise which takes into account sport, safety and convenience the Practical Turtle seems to make uncommon sense.