Hardware needs for leg-o-mutton rig

[L.W. Baxter]

I'm preparing to order some bronze sail-rig hardware from JD.

The "sail plan" drawing for my boat ( the Dion Swampscott from The Dory Book) shows no details. This is supposed to be a very simple rig, but I've experienced some mission creep, so I'm going for a bit of refinement.

First, the mainsheet as shown is simply lashed to the boom. Bearing in mind that I want my young kids to handle the boat, I thought I could adapt one of the vanging? set-ups from other rigs, like the Gunning Dory or Beachcomber-Alpha.

Maybe this would be overly complex or pretencious, but...

The rigs show two "bridles", one with a ring and snap, the other with a swivel block, plus a swivel block with eyebolt at the transom. The bridles, it appears, are lashed through grommets on the foot of the sail, so need no further hardware?

Another option might be the setup Gardner shows for the 18' One-design Swamscott, with the mainsheet lashed to the end of the boom, run through a block at the transom, then back through two blocks spaced out on the boom, no bridles.

Is there any significant difference between these arrangements?

Also, on my sail plan, the top of the jib (halyard?) is simply lashed to the mast. The 18' One-design shows a single block, and the Beachcomber and Gunning dorys show two. But the One-design shows a fore-stay, and the Beachcomber does not. And my Dion model will have a backstay, unlike either of the first two. Plus my jib is very small. Please don't spread this around.

The jib-halyard then appears to travel down the mast. Where does it go to? On the Beachcomber, I see a block and a cleat drawn on the thwart next to the mast, but on the gunning dory just a cleat. Do I need a block and cleat or can it be cleated directly?

Another thing: all of these leg-o-muttons as Gardner has drawn them are to be lashed at the peak and clew. Is there any reason to do it otherwise? Is a "topping lift" considered worthwhile, or even applicable, for this type of sail?

I've also built a rudder like the Beachcomber, with a tiller yoke. I count 4 more blocks, a couple eyebolts, plus some method of connecting blocks to the yoke. Eyebolts plus a ring?

Sounds like a lot of lines and hardware for a rig originally intended to use simple lashings, and steered with an oar. But its all in good fun. And I can't seem to stop buying stuff.

Thanks for the input.

--Lee

[Todd Bradshaw]

need drawings, pictures etc.

[L.W. Baxter]

Okay, after getting express written consent ;) , here goes... Illustrations by Samuel F. Manning from John Gardner's The Dory Book .

This first one is the sail plan of the boat I am building. No frills here, as you can see...
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid109/p8c3fc403589568f43030b6385637f7d4/f927dca7.jpg

Bear with me while I add the others. It's a miracle I can manage to do this at all. I've only just learned how to turn my scanner on...

Okay, here we have the 18' One-design Swampscott.
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid109/p4efa067ec11db3ea91ca2bd3984d18be/f927dc63.jpg

And here is the Beachcomber Alpha rig.
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid109/p7dbe88ad90b7baf9d60b0ddf1f3efc92/f927dced.jpg

[ 04-01-2004, 10:54 PM: Message edited by: L.W. Baxter ]

[Todd Bradshaw]

Well, either of the other two mainsheet systems is going to be easier to hand-hold than just a sheet tied to the boom, though it means trimming more line when tacking or jibing. The bridles most likely are anchored loosely in place on the boom with thumb cleats (wooden bumps on the boom) to keep the loops on their ends from sliding up and down the boom. They would not be put through or attached to the sail itself, as it isn't strong enough to take the strain. I suppose the bridles might spread mainsheet stress loads over more of the boom than the blocks on short strops or hangers, but doubt it's a big deal on a sail this small or that one of these alternative systems is significantly better in use than the other.

Raising the main on a halyard creates a couple problems which don't seem to be explained in the drawings. First of all, they all show the jibstay/jib halyard system being attached with a loop that surrounds the mast and which would likely be kept from sliding down by another thumb cleat. This type of system will not allow hoops, robands, lacing, etc. to slide past it and can't even be attached over a sail track if you want sail slides to move past it - one good reason to avoid using a main halyard altogether on the Dion Dory plan.

Secondly, all of these sails have a tack angle (luff/boom angle) which is significantly less than 90 degrees. If the sail is hooked-up at the boom's outhaul, laced to the boom and connected at the gooseneck, it's usually impossible to raise the sail with a standard halyard and sail-luff-to-mast attachment. Due to the sub-90 tack angle, the distance from the clew corner to the mast horizontally is shorter than the foot (clew corner to tack corner). This causes the sail to bind part way up and the only way to get it all the way up (or down when lowering it) is to detach most of it's lower half from the mast, raise it and then re-connect the luff-to-mast fittings. To get around this problem, the sailmaker has to build a jackline system into the lower half of the sail's luff. This is a quick release, rope or webbing system that allows the hoops (for example) to temporarily move away from the sail luff as slack is introduced into the jackline. The sail is then raised and the slack taken out of the jackline, bringing the hoops back close to the luff. With lacing, instead of hoops, it would be a matter of being able to temporarily induce a bunch of slack into the lace line, raise the sail and then tighten-up the lace line again. Some luff lacing techniques do induce a fair amount of slack to areas which have not yet been raised, but whether it would be enough to eliminate having to purposely induce extra slack is hard to say without trying it. Some sort of jackline-type system is also usually used (and needed) on sub-90 tack angle sails if you want to be able to lower them and tie-in a reef. Confused yet?

At only about 60 sq. ft. on the main, the easiest solution may well be just dropping the pre-assembled rig into the mast step, hooking the jib tack to the stem and the backstay to the transom and going sailing. At any rate, there seem to be some things on the sailplans that could be explained a lot better or which don't seem to make sense. Then again, I'm getting over some sort of flu and the have me on codene cough syrup and I'm a bit spaced-out at the moment. Perhaps, Ian M. or somebody who has sailed this type of boat can give us some help figuring this stuff out.

[L.W. Baxter]

Well, I'm glad I asked.

Thanks, Todd, sorry to hear that you've been unwell. I suppose it's still flu season in your neck of the woods. Out here, we're heading into allergy season!

It had not occurred to me (obviously) that there would be trouble raising or lowering the main because of the angle between boom and mast. Throw in the problem of the lacing and it sounds like a no-go, or at least not worth working around.

So assuming that I just lash the peak and clew...how do I use the reef that is being built into my sail? And those nifty little hooks on my gooseneck which, I've been informed, are for my luff cringles?

It would seem that reefing would have to be done on shore, not bobbing along between sips of tea and nibbles on ginger cookies. But I could just make a second lashing hole farther down the mast to correspond to the reef, and set the sail up that way, correct?

But is there any real reason to reef a 60 sq ft sail at all? Apparently, the other dories in question, with much more sail area, had no reefing considerations. Maybe it would make more sense to have the sail made without a reef?

--Lee

[Todd Bradshaw]

I'd estimate that the combined C.E. for the boat's sailplan is roughly located above the aft edge of the centerboard and only about 4.5' above the level of the hull's bottom, which should put it just a bit over 4' above the waterline. At 60 sq. ft. and only 4' up, I wonder if you'll ever get much use out of a reef line unless you're really planning on doing a lot of heavy air sailing. If the hull has enough beam to allow you to hike out, you should be able to keep it up with full sail in just about anything short of a hurricane.

As it seems to be rigged in the drawings, the fastest (and possibly only) way to put in a reef would be to take the whole rig out of the boat, lay it on the grass, move things around to their new positions, lash everything and drop the mast back into the step. To make on-the-water reefing possible, you would need to switch the jibstay to a hounds system that doesn't block the back of the mast (like that on a Hobie Cat or something similar that bolts or screws through or into the sides of the mast) then add a sailtrack to the aft side of the mast, add track-slides to the sail's luff and rig the bottom 3'-4' of them on a jackline. At that point you could reef by easing the jackline and halyard, lowering the sail enough to get the reef tack ring on one of the gooseneck hooks and then snug up the jackline and halyard again. That's a lot of added hardware just to reef a few square feet out of a small sail and it only works if the distance between the regular clew ring and the reef's tack ring is equal to or greater than the length of the normal foot from tack to clew. Otherwise, the reef tack ring will end up too far aft of the mast when the sail is lowered to reach the reef hook without disconnecting the regular outhaul and letting the sail's foot slide forward on the boom.

Going to less than a 90 degree tack angle is one of those things that doesn't seem like it would create any kind of problem when you draw-up a sailplan. Sometimes it's a function of a boom that angles up a lot at it's aft end, like these boats have, but it's more commonly a result of adding a lot of rake to the mast. Modern iceboats are a good example. They use boltropes in slotted, heavily raked masts and also in their booms. It is literally impossible to raise or lower the sail with the mast and boom connected because of the sub-90 angle. You raise the sail with the boom just hanging on the footrope of the sail and then once the sail is all the way up, you can finally drop the gooseneck into the mast slot. While the sail is going up, the gooseneck is somewhere out in front of the mast. This is why there are no reefs on modern iceboat sails, even though they would be quite handy to have at times.

In this case, I think I'd keep the whole system about as simple as possible and probably ditch the main halyard and the reef line. I do like the improved mainsheet systems and would probably rig one of them on a rope traveler across the transom. I also might hang a block on the mast for the jib and rig it with a halyard, rather than just tie the jib-head up there. There are times during launchings and landings when lowering the jib is a better option than having it hanging there flogging in the wind and beating itself up.

[Todd Bradshaw]

This is one interesting way to rig the jib to a single block hanging on a strop. The "halyard" is spliced to the jib's peak ring, and runs up around the block hanging from the mast and then down through a series of rings sewn to the sail's luff, forming it's own stay of sorts. At the tack corner, there is a double block attached to the deck. The decending halyard then runs through one side of the double, up through the sail's tack ring (forming a stay-and-luff-tensioning downhaul-like system, back down through the other side of the double and back to a cleat in the cockpit. It takes a fair amount of line, especially if you want enough slack to be able to lower the sail and drag it into the cockpit while still hooked up, but is kind of a neat system and allows for fast jib deployment or dousing and a lot of luff tension adjustment.
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid110/pec762345b61754b0e4cff9c03cd31572/f92554ea.jpg