Rutland rendevouz

Carol Lawson · 04 Mar 2016, 20:38

Great to meet Peter and Andy today at Rutland Water ! Our first proper sail and with company! Especially useful for the CCOB exercise! (Compass Cover Overboard!)
Look forward to our own mini raid!

Carol Lawson · 04 Mar 2016, 20:40

Oops! We really hadn't had that much mulled wine!
(Why is it upside down ?)

Andy Dingle · 06 Mar 2016, 19:38

It was nice meeting up with you both at Rutland on Monday. Shame the wind was so gentle but at least it gave you a chance to familiarise yourselves with your new boat in more controlled conditions!
Attached are a couple of pictures of 'Iris' in full sail - apologies they are not very good, taken on my cheap chinese telephone camera! I'll email you the rest of the collection for you to see and with some of my plans for summer sailing that I hope you may be able to join in. In the meantime it will be great to get out for a sail on these winter days..
We must also get the chance to talk single line reefing systems, it looks like mine is the same as yours and I think I have just about got it off pat now, although i still need to make a few small mods on the boom.

Andy and Equinox (BC23 No. 25)

Rob Johnstone · 07 Mar 2016, 20:45

Andy,
I think I need to speak to Pat, too.
(1) How do you stop being garrotted by the yards of reefing line that suddenly come free when you lower the main?
(2) If you pull the reefing lines tight when the sail is down, I find you have to lead them out before raising the main, (or at least as you raise it), otherwise the friction on them stops the main from rising.
(3) The same problem occurs when taking in a reef : friction in the system is pretty enormous and the pulling in of a reef quite often nedes a bit of help by pulling on the bight of the line that runs along the boom.
Do you have the same problems?
Incidently, I can't remember whether you have lazy jacks or not?

Finally, are you going to the boat show? I'll be there on Friday and Saturday next week.......

Andy Dingle · 08 Mar 2016, 21:42

Hello Rob. Nice to hear from you - I doubt I'll make it to the boat show - I already spend too much time down in that there London...

Re your queries. Yes, I have lazy jacks that are fitted to the sail bag, I've actually put some additional string on them as just the original two either side weren't enough I thought. They originally supported the whole weight of the boom and sail and I was a bit concerned that the unsubstantial cringles in the sail bag were taking all the weight. I fitted a topping lift as well. I have 'single line' reefing with the first reef on the stbd side.

The yards of reefing lines fall neatly out of the way into the sail bag as the main is lowered and don't present any risk to my health!
As the lines lay loose in the sail bag, when the main goes up the lines naturally return to their rightful place in life hanging from the reefing points in the leach, so there is no need to loosen them as the main goes up - apart from when (which I always do) forget to release them when I put the sail away still reefed. In this case the same procedure applies as to shaking them out.
I initially found that the lines lay alongside the boom inside the sail bag and I just couldn't see what was going on. So I moved them to lay outside the bag, on either side. This way it is easy to pull them through the blocks to ensure there is enough slack to raise the main without them causing any snags/friction - I learned that is not necessary to pull the lines hard or even put them in the winch, which I did do when I first had the boat, this caused me more problems and I actually managed to twist a block doing this.
When putting in the reef, with the lines outside the sail bag I can see what is going on. What I do is take the tension off the main halyard - the main just slides down a bit, I pull the reefing lines along side of the boom, to bring the LEACH down first, then pull the line through the clutch on the coach roof to then bring the luff down after the leach, when the reefing points are neatly on the boom, fore and aft, I just use enough tension through the clutch to hold them taught, lock it off, then raise the mainsail, with the winch to tension it all off. That way I found there is no need to grauch at any of the reefing lines.

I have thought of putting the reefing blocks at the fore end of the boom on some kind of small 'soft shackle' (as they are on each reefing point on the luff of the sail). I thought that then they would always take the correct angle that any tension on the reefing lines dictates - as opposed to them being fixed, as they are now, and therefore unable to move and any tension on the lines tend to rub up against the cheeks of the block as opposed to letting the rope run easily through it, like it's supposed to.
Hope all this makes sense! Fairly obvious when it's seen in practice but it took me quite a while to sort it all out - but it does work now...

On a separate note - I followed your advice on adjusting the rollers on the swinging arm of my trailer - I guestimated the positioning so the bilge keels would roll between each pair of rollers, it seemed to work OK as she slid off the trailer last week with just the gentlest of persuasion - no one was more surprised than me! Just need to see if this can be repeated. I'd rigged a back winching system just in case which proved redundant.

We're considering some kind of 'start of season' gathering at Rutland ..? Nothing definite yet but watch this forum...

Regards

Peter Cockerton · 13 Mar 2016, 15:02

Open invitation this Saturday for a meet at Rutland, weather looks cold but blue skies and good winds, plan to get her into the water around 10 ish, off the water off the water by 3 ish and perhaps a hot meal somewhere local.

Perhaps a friendly race around the water towers and down to the Z buoy by the reserve and back to the beach for a hot beverage.

Any interest?

Peter Cockerton

Carol Lawson · 13 Mar 2016, 20:23

Ahhh! We would have loved to have joined you! But we are off to London to see 'The Winter's Sail' oops I mean Tale! And then to the boat show on Sunday!!
We are desperate to get out on our new boat again! And are free almost every weekend through the rest of Jan and Feb!
Hope you have fun!

Anthony Huggett · 13 Mar 2016, 22:50

Rutland is our default sailing destination. But I don't think Myfanwy would be up for sailing before April. Meanwhile, having run out of things to make I'm reduced to wallpapering the bedroom.

Peter Cockerton · 14 Mar 2016, 12:41

Carol

It will be a good day, it allways is. will announce here when going again, so you can see if you can make it, i would like to see a regular meet at Rutland for some fun racing around the towers.

Anthony

Will see you in April then at Rutland.

Peter

Andy Dingle · 23 Mar 2016, 22:18

Rob. I take back everything I said earlier re single line reefing lines. You are right, they are the very machinations of Satan. Devised by Old Nick himself to confuse and frustrate.
As the windy spinny thing touched F7 (32 mph) today I ended up mired in a tangled mess of rope that would have put the most industrious arachnoid to shame.
With apologies to Mr Bart - I am now 'reviewing the situation' and thinking of going back to two short bits of string fore and aft of the boom for each reef and keeping the string completely off the coachroof... Nice and simple, well that's the plan as discussed in the pub after.

Re the trailer launching/recovering saga - great success, she now slips on and off like a well worn seaboot.. Marvellous!

Andy and the long suffering BC23 'Equinox'

Rob Johnstone · 24 Mar 2016, 12:05

Hi Andy....

I seem to remember that Bill Rollo may have found the solution. I think he has attached an old sheet (of the bed variety) under the boom secured to the lazy jack sail covers on each side ( by some cunning means) to form a U shape under the boom so that the reefing lines can run between this sheet and the boom. I intend to try some thing similar involving either velcro (at a last resort) some sewing in the forthcoming season. At the moment the sail and boom are in my garage whilst I ponder the problem as light relief from historical research.....

Andy Dingle · 24 Mar 2016, 13:59

Rob. After yesterdays debacle, when my carefully thought through procedure just went to pieces in a fairly strong wind (worked fine in practice in a F3!), I'm going to re think and re do the whole reefing procedure - in my mind it is absolutely essential that it works flawlessly every time - some research this morning points me to the Jiffy reefing system, in it's various forms?
I'm going to move these posts onto a more relevant topic subject and pick it up from there with my findings that I hope may be useful..probably more pertinent to BC 23 - 26's..

Cheers