One of the benefits of not sailing at the Glossop Open was the opportunity to have a closer look at how the other top boats have organised their basic controls.
With this in mind Sarissa came hame and I've re-organised most of the basic controls incorporating ideas nicked from others.
The kicker is slightly more powerful but a lot easier to use. The spinny halyard is using the system seen on GBR560 which again is far easier than our old system to both thread and use. We use lowers instead of a strut but I've managed to streamline this system as well. The jib tension is in two parts, a rough control and a fine which marries in with the modified raking rig system which moves the top of the mast to transom from 25'10 right down to 23'4. All the controls are on the centerline and can be adjusted from either side without having to double up on cleats, shackles, blocks etc.
It's a funny thing that I've probably re=fitted a Javelin 10 times in the last 9 years and the systems get slightly better each time and seem to use less rope and fewer blocks and importantly for a boat often on the road a lot easier to rig and de-rig.
Any pictures or drawings of these clever, new way of fitting out? There's a guy over here restoring 319, who is begging for things like that The old 268-pages are a little outdated; we did all that work before Sarissa was built....
I think your work proves that even the sailors that are in the class for some years are learning and changing. I'll be glad to join in.... I have a simple problem that I'm trying to solve, but it sounds almost too silly to ask any of you.
I have used a transom sheeting arrangement from when we started out in the Javelin. In 268 we upgraded this to a swallowtail, to get better control on the leech. Worked great, so I was happy. In 268 we also developed a technique for gybing, where the helm (being me) controls the kite, while the crew could gybe the main and switch sides with the double-ended pole we used.
Ever since I got 508, there's trouble.... 508 came with a single ended, launching pole. After a short period of learning about this great thing, we decided to gybe as usual, just put the pole into the sequence before the gybe, no problem. For some reason, since we are doing this, the mainsheet snags around the corner of the transom (like in a Laser) with devastating (wet ) results.
Anyone with a good solution for this? I tried to pull in the mainsheet at every gybe, but that messes up the kite, or my back hits the boom (very low!!) and causes other trouble.
Let me know what you think is wrong, or I'm forced to change to some form of central sheeting Saw some nice 470 pictures.......
OK we'll start off with the mainsheets system and work our way through all the systems.
however remember that these systems are the ones I use which certainly does not mean they are the best in any way but at least it gives you a starter.
Below is the general route of our mainsheet. The system is a split tail or swallowtail mainsheet system. It enables us to centerline the boom when sailing upwind which allows us to point high but without pulling down on the leech which can kill your boat speed. The system uses roughly half the normal length of mainsheet which results in far less rope round your feet and as there is no purchace it is a lot quicker to pull in and out.
The blue shows the main route, the light blue shows where the mainsheet goes inside the boom and the pink is the elastic with a floating ring in the middle.
Below you can see in a bi more detail the business end of the split tail. We use 2.5 mm Marlow V12 for the split tail although D12 would be fine and is much cheaper. I pulled about 500mm of core from the main rope and cut it off. I then tied the middle of the V12 to the end of the core and then rolled, pulled, tugged the outer sleeve of the main rope over 500mm of the V12, which essentially replacing the core. I then just ran the sewing machine down the 500 mm to lock everything into place. You could do exactly the same with a needle and sailmakers thread if you dont have access to a powerfull sewing machine. A bit of heat on the very end of the sleeve and you now have a split tail. Each end of the split tail is then attached to the gunwhale around 400 from the transom. We also use a length of elastic and a ring which, (This bit is for you Arent) if tensioned correctly will stop the tails blowing out of the boat and catching on the corner of the transom.
Arent, if you are having a probl;em with this then either the ring, elastic or both is not doing it's job correctly.
Next we fitted the rear block to the boom getting it position as high up as possible so that the feed would lead inside the boom. The radiused cut outs are to allow the block to change angle when reaching and running without binding on the boom.
The sheet then routes through the boom and emerges though a hole cut in the underside of the boom. The reason we do this is to stop the rope between the two boom blocks from drooping down and strangling the helm every time you tack. We used to use a ring below the boom and have the rope external of the boom but the internal system is a lot neater and less prone to snagging. You can see below that the sheet does droop a little but this is well forward of where the helm crosses so has never been a problem.
Lastly the sheet then goes through the second boom block and directly to the center ratchet block and jammer. We use a Harken Main/kicker center block which is ****** expensive but to my mind it's possibley the most important bit of kit on the boat so it's worth spending a few quid.
There are a few details that need examining. I'll check where my sheet meets the gunwhale. I think I won't make it to 400mm, and in 268 I'm pretty sure we did.... I'll also try the extra loop in the elastic around the ring. I don't have that, so the ring can move freely. Could be a potential problem I'll also put some more tension on the elastic. See what happens... So far for my problem. Can't wait till thursday, for the next clubrace, with improved mainsheet
For the others: I couldn't afford to buy this Harken-double-
whatever it's called, so I tried a cheap trick with a Ronstan block and cleat. It seems to work very well for me, so that's a good cheaper alternative. I work the kicker much, much more since I can reach it this easily. I can even do something you cant I sometimes put on the kicker after I put the kite down at the downwind mark. I can pull the rope while I'm still standing in the middle of the boat. Try that with the expensive Harken thing, and you get into trouble
We use the kicker a lot and after the talk by Tim Rush at the Glossop we'll be using even more kicker in future as he indicated that from the photos af an event at Southwold many people were not using anywhere near enough and having thought about it I think we are also guilty of not powering the kicker up more.
With this in mind I uprated our system to 24:1 from 16:1 and reduced the system run friction at the same time.
One of the biggest differences with our system is that the load from the boom goes to the mast base and not to the mast. There are a nuber of reasons, both from an engineering standpoint, reducing mast load and from never having to attach or detach it from the mast each time you break the boat down for travel.
For the high load parts of the system we use Marlow 4mm V12 (the blue and pink lines) and for the lower load and for handling and cleating we change to a 4mm spectra with a soft cover. (the orange which is nice on my hands)
The blocks are stainless, high load ballbearing from Holt and Harken with a Ronstan high load double at the base. In the photo abopve you can see where we used to have a number of through deck blocks to lead the lines under the C/B case coaming. However we had to replace these just about every year and that gets expensive so now we just run the lines on top, in the open and I wonder why I've never done it before as it's so simple, cheap and friction free. The feed (orange) runs into the top of the case and then up through the base of the center mainsheet/kicker fitting.
One other point worth noting is our fore and aft adjustment on the boom. This allows us to rake the mast a long way and still keep full movement of the kicker and also in light winds we can slide the car forward on the boom to allow more room for the crew when roll tacking. Who says I don't care about my crew?
Obviously I can only adjust it when sailing on port tack but to be honest I tend to leave it alone anyway. Again the system is designed with easy rig / de-rig in mind, so no dual control line just one line on the boom but to my mind very effective.
At the business end we just pass the loop through the clew of the main and hook it over the peg. Quick simple and easy. (the other two pegs on each side are left over from our twin auto spinny boom days)
The purple and blue line above is what I pull and you can see the cleat on the right.
Right I'll move on to Rig tension, Jib sheeting cars, Adjustable shrouds, lowers /Strut, next time I get chance.
Rig tension is a little more tricky as we use a raking rig and also a 2:1 system on the jib halyard to reduce compression on the mast.
Our mast rakes from 23'4" from the transom to over 25' Obviously if you want to use anything like 32:1 on the forestay tension with that amount of rig movement you need about ten miles of rope.
To get round this we use a 8:1 course adjustment and a powerful 32:1 fine adjustment.
On the picture below you can see the 2:1 system at the head of the forestay. We then use a hook on the halyard loop attached to a large stainless bb block. The line is then split to the course and fine systems.
The two feeds emerge next to each other on the center casing aft of the mainsheet jammer. By pulling on the line aft of the block you can pull on tension from eith side of the boat,
We aim to pull between 100 to 120kg of tension on the forestay. Depending how far aft your shroud position is this can vary a lot but for usit's around 250kg on each shroud. However we have been running with slightly less recently when sailing on the sea. 80 to 90kg seems to give the boat a little more grunt although pointing is a little worse.
I mention the forestay tension first as this is actualy what you are looking to tension. Measuring the shrouds is only worth while if you know what effect the shroud tension is having on the forestay.
Before you start winding on rig tension just do a couple of little checks. Run a thin line from shroud base to shroud base. Apply rig tension and see if the line droops. If so we need to talk about stiffening up the boat between the shroud base and the mast foot. The other check is actually not so little. In curved air we found that when we applied 100kg of forestay tension the bow would lift by 20mm!! and we could detect two concave dents in the hull forward of the shrouds. This resulted in us fitting a space frame to take the loads. I used a laser spirit level to check the bow lift but I'm sure you could do a similar check with a string line. The point being that every boat will have different capability on how much rig tension you can apply before you start deforming the boat, either by pulling the bow or the deck up, or forcing the front tank bulkhead down. This is aldo not alway down to age as some older boats can take a lot more tension than many of the newer ones. Even with our new boat we can't open the front tank hatch covers when we have lots of tension on so you should expect some deformation. However there gets to a point where for each little extra you put on the tension you get more boat bend with little change in forestay tension. Only by spending an hour or so playing will you descover what your boat can take.
If you find that your boat is a little soft and you can't get more than 80kg on the forestay then consider moving your shroud base positions aft by a couple of inches. The further aft these are the more forestay tension you will get for the same shroud tension. Where you will lose is on a dead run as the boom won't go out so far and the crew will be trapezing slightly further aft. However in my experiance neither of these side effects outway the benefit of getting a tight jib luff wire.
Does anyone else use RWO mainsheet jammers for the jib sheeting? And what are the best alternatives? Winning may not be everything but coming second is nothing!
There used to be a few boats using mainsheet jammers for the jib sheets.It might have been better suited to an outboard sheeting system as all mainsheet jammers have a central sheave leading and which needs to be followed by a turning block on the tank face if the lead is to be fair. Most boats have a turning block fitted at a near horizontal angle,leading to a fixed camcleat.The cleat has to be positioned far enough from the turning block that it can be released quickly and it needs to be aligned very carefully so that the sheet can be cleated without a big effort from the trapeze.It goes without saying that the cleat must be strong and reliable which rules out all the cleats with plastic cams,except the servo which has stainless steel teeth moulded in and a very nice action when the sheet simply moves down rather than needing to be pulled to open the cams.
Ok I've started to understand some of this and have decided to go for some spectacular go-faster stripes and slick graphics it's cheap and at least I might look like i'm going fast. But seriously I think I'll employ part of the 562 tension rig rather than buy a holt allen 25mm high tension triple block with becket unless someone has one they want to part with at reasonable cost
) results.
I'll also put some more tension on the elastic. See what happens...
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