Head sail changes, furling (optional) and dealing with a square, anchor-full bowsprit

[marujo.sortudo]

So, I've been musing for quite some time about improving my headsail situation for blue-water cruising. Here is some info on and pictures of my boat, Mimi Rose:

http://pagetraditionalboats.com/mimirose.htm

Since '93, she's been rigged up with a Profurl system with a high-cut Genoa that basically lives on the furler (there are no other headsails.) With the cutter rig, this works amazingly well from about 7-25 kts, though, I've never found it useful to use the Genoa in a reefed position. I'm finding this system inadequate for the following reasons:

1. I want improved performance in light air and in mild downwind conditions. I'd like to add a drifter and probably a cruising spinnaker to my sail suite eventually to improve this performance.

2. The current system uses luff tape to place the sail in the foil and pulling the sail down is a bear, plus there is no way to contain it once it leaves the foil. Putting it up isn't much better and both are best done in light airs. I want to be able to change and/or drop sails safely in much more substantial weather.

3. A have a square bowsprit with two anchors that stow very nicely (see Bill Page's anchor tamer in the Rigger's Apprentice) on the side of it and the head sail is attached 6' out from the deck. In an ideal world, I'd love to be able bring the headstay (and/or) furler back to the deck to do sail changes there. Alas, a normal bowsprit traveler arrangement seems impossible; although, I've heard rumor of other solutions that I can only guess at.

4. I really dislike the idea of a sail ever being stuck up and open in a blow. This happened once to me two years ago when I turned up into a sudden squall and the genoa sheet quickly tied itself around a lifeline, very well. There was no way to douse the genoa as the knot could not be quickly undone under strain and there was way too much tenson on the luff tape (not to mention single handing on a lee shore. >> Obviously, this day taught me other lessons that will help me avoid this circumstance in the future...but not 100% of the time.)

So far, the best solutions I've conceived of are:

1. Hanked on sails on some kind of floating traveler (no, I don't know what that would look like, yet.) This would probably involve a fixed headstay and another that could be relaxed a brought back to the deck for headsail changes. Naturally, a downhaul would be part of this setup. This option would take care or all the mentioned issues, but I sure would miss the convenience of a furler for single handing and drawing into and out of harbor.

2. The reef rite furling system with it's Kiwi-slides intrigues me because I could see that it might fix everything except for #3 and should greatly reduce the incidence of #4. That said, I have no personal experience with this system which gives me some trepidation.

So, I'm curious to know some thoughts about how well I can address these issues and if there are some other thoughts I should consider, or if there are some tweaks that could make either of these systems better.

Thanks to all, Colin