Taking the tiller back! Our new Thunderbird 26!

I grew up sailing small boats. Make that VERY small boats. I started sailing in an 8 foot pram called an El Toro out of the Kaneohe Bay Yacht Club in Hawaii...not long after the islands became a state. My family raced with friends aboard their Cal-20 and my folks soon purchased a new Cal-30 back in the mid-60's. These were all tiller boats and they were fun to sail. Simple and fun. My sailing has graduated to a big boat for cruising big water between here and Alaska but despite her beauty and her size...somewhere along my progression of sailboats I had lost that feeling one can only have with a tiller in one hand and a mainsheet (ok..or a beer...) in the other. Hence...The Thunderbird. I had a beer in one hand as i was talking with my good friend Michael Schattenkerk this past spring and we reminisced about the early days and of our small boat sailing. It started us down the road of a new partnership in a new (to us) boat. We looked at a lot of smaller boats and narrowed our criteria to include fiberglass, tillers, singlehandable, affordable boats with occasional overnighting capability and a class we just might do some racing in. Leschi marina is handy for both of us and so we looked into the San Juan 24 fleet as well as into Thunderbirds...the boat which finally came into our respective families. If you're not familiar with the Thunderbird 26, it's a Pacific Northwest icon. Originally designed by Ben Seaborn as part of a contest a plywood manufacturer sponsored in order to sell more plywood...I kid you not. Her hard chine hull and sharp edged transom is the giveaway to identifying a T-Bird from any distance. Michael and I ended up with a great boat with quite a history which I'll go into further in subsequent posts but most of all...we got a boat that's great to sail...with the tiller in one hand and a beer in the other. She's as of yet still nameless although we have recently been referring to her as "Poco Mas"...or 'Little More" and she's a kick. Now...why is it that of all these sails...there are no reefs in the mainsails???