Cruising Sailors Forum Archive

I think what you need to do

Is to install single line reefing. Then run the reefing line and your halyard down to turning blocks and then to a pair of Harken rewind electric winches. Connect current sensors to the two winches and calibrate the current sensors so that you can use them to indicate load. You can interface the winch controls and current sensors to a microprocessor with wifi capability. Finally write a "Reef" app for your smart phone so you can use it to reef the sail. Similarly, you could replace your primary genoa winches, your main sheet winch and your jib furling winch with Harken electric rewinds, interfaced to a microprocessor with wifi. Then, with a "Sailing" app you can sail the boat from your smart phone. Finally, if you get an autopilot that can be run from the smart phone you can sail the boat totally from down below. Interfacing the sailing and autopilot apps will allow automated control of sail trim to optimize speed.

The ultimate step is to interface a couple of trainable cameras to the system and to connect the whole thing up to a 4G cell interface. When you get that done you can sail your boat from home or the office using your smart phone or via the internet.

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