Hoisting the headsail.

If you sail on a yacht where the headsail is raised rather than kept on a furling system, you can save yourself some effort by throwing most of the body of the sail across the guardrail and leaving about 1m of the clew draped inside the rail.

When the sail is hoisted, instead of the foot of the sail snagging on the guardrail, filling with wind and becoming hard to raise, the sail will tend to billow out to leward over the rail and make life much easier.

This approach is common on racing boats where speed of raising a sail is of great importance.

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