TAKE THE ABOVE ADVICE! A few months ago I posted a story of a weekend trip I
crewed on a Westsail 42 where gales blew the whole time. When a headsail
partially unfurled (or actually, got tighter around the extrusion) in the
middle of the night, if we had had an extra wrap or two around the drum, we
could have just wrapped it tighter and gone back to sleep. Instead, I spent
a ridiculous amount of time (several hours, I think it was) at the bowsprit
trying to jury-rig a system to hold the drum while I manually wound extra
turns with the heavy furling line, during a cold rainy gale. It sounds so
simple now, but it was very difficult at the time in those conditions. Now,
any potter sail is going to be much easier to deal with than the acre of
sail on that boat, but the point remains.