However, while singlehanding I ran into a couple of things that seem like they would be easy to resolve if I just had someone else's boat to look at. Unfortunately I don't so I have to ask here. I'll try and put all of my basic questions into this post.
First, the staysail. Mine came with a furler but I've found out I'm really not a fan of it so I think I'll just be flying it with a halyard and a downhaul to keep it from hitting the water on the way down. If you have your staysail rigged so that you don't have to go forward to take it down, can you give me some details on how you've done that? My instinct is to rig a long line from the top of the sail to a stanchion base and back to the cockpit, but I'm interested in what others have done.
For the staysail sheets, how are yours run through/around/over the lifelines? I had mine entirely inside the lifelines but it seemed like maybe outside was better. But then I'm not sure how the windward sheet would chafe. Also, how long are your sheets? I don't have any so I stole my spinnaker pole lines, but I'd like to be able to rig up both in the future.
Moving back to the mainsail: How does your vang line run back to the cockpit? If I just toss it over the traveler and into the companionway it's in reach on one tack, but hard to get to and pull on the other tack as the traveler car pulls it out of the way:
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And last but not least, how are your reef lines rigged? I have the rigging manual so I understand how they run on the deck and to the base of the mast. From there, I have mine running up one side of the sail, through the reef tack grommet, down the other side of the sail, through the mast, through the sheave at the end of the mast, through the reef clew grommet, and back to the end of the boom on the other side of the sail.
This kind of works, but as you can see in the below pictures it has some problems. First is friction, though I feel this could be helped by using blocks hooked to the grommets instead of running directly through the grommets. More importantly is that having the aft line run diagonally makes it pretty much impossible for the reef to be tensioned all the way, and it puts tension at really awkward spots on the sail. It's just pulling the sail in the wrong direction. What I've heard is, instead of going back to the end of the boom, I should go vertically down to the boom and loop around it. But my sail is continuous on the boom, so there is no way to tie something around it.
- PXL_20210603_224220751.MP.jpg (240.31 KiB) Viewed 2542 times
- PXL_20210603_224622889.MP.jpg (236.4 KiB) Viewed 2542 times
).
