Our jackyard topsail system

[John B]

Ian asked about it in the Highfield levers thread.I've preached on about it before now but it came up elsewhere recently so here's a repeat.It's copied straight out of WB magazine ( thankyou WB) from an article by the Carrs about their system on Curlew.

The system works very well.
basically, the halyard becomes a kind of jackstay which captivates the heel of the yard and brings it in firm to the mast. It also keeps control of the yard nicely when setting or dropping.
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid136/p824707668e8ba0ef3e30f784a31bd088/f7549154.jpg

My extra little wrinkle was to make some wooden chocks on the boom and keep it there permanently ...yard, jackyard and topsail live on the boom
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid11/p023a3503f54f4c511f002c3acf4f100e/fe11c55c.jpg
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid50/pd4a7fd6ffccd3b1148a94e74cd8fe0fb/fca92aff.jpg
those little stubby blocks spread the lazyjacks off the boom a bit and thats where the topsail lives when it's down.
incidentally you might also happen to notice Kirsty steering the boat 10 degrees higher than the 90 ft Fife withrockstarbunch of americas cup sailors on board. 25 miles later it was somewhere out in the distance behind us. :D

Things I would change: . ACB brought up a very valid point last time this was a topic.
If you set the topsail on the starboard side( unklike my setup ;) ), then the boat will be on starboard tack and therefore have right of way when you're stooging around setting or dousing.

Ed Burnett has also said that he makes a hollow gaff and runs the sheet inside it for some of his designs. I'd seriously consider doing that if I was remaking my gaff.

[ 10-10-2004, 11:39 PM: Message edited by: John B ]

[Thad]

John, About raising and lowering,I always raise in the lee and lower into the belly of the sail, this on the advise of Mike Burn who sails the Albert Strange SHEILA. Raising in the lee frees the topsail of contact with the peak halyard in the set, so while I hoist (and lower) on the port side, we hoist on the starboard tack.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Nice point, Thad.

I had thought there were two schools, the windward school and the leeward school, but I find there are three!

However, I'll stick with hoisting and lowering to windward, for two reasons. I feel more comfortable prancing about on the uphill side of the deck, with the mast and sail between me and a trip OB., and I find that the topsail and its yards are less likely to misbehave in the early stages of hoisting if they are plastered against the windward face of the mainsail by the wind; if to leeward they can acquire a mind of their own!

[John B]

Interesting... I hadn't even considered trying to set the sail to leeward. But then , I haven't really had too much of a problem setting it to windward. The biggest issue for us is running the sheet correctly relative to the jackyard and halyard. One day I found that somehow I got both the halyard and the sheet run inside the part of the sheet that runs along the gaff :eek: !!Luckily, because both were that way the whole topsail was able to thread on up there through this rather constricted path.( reason for it happening. late for race start, shorthanded, didn't have time to re run, highly annoyed that I'd done it anyway, WTH, lets go)
That's the sort of reason I think that Eds idea is so good.Running the sheet in a hollow gaff eliminates all the zen stuff of ensuring correct paths I imagine.
And Andrew.Thinking more about it.... I agree wholeheartedly about the windward deck and control of the sail.

[ 10-11-2004, 03:50 PM: Message edited by: John B ]

[True Love]

ACB, JohnB --

On average (as I'm sure it differs a bit depending on your boat's displacement), at what windspeed do you typically fly and then take down your topsail?

[John B]

Hi TL. If I was starting a race and I thought the breeze would go up to say 15 or so I'd set it. If I thought it was likely to go much more than that I'd do without . Having said that,we've carried it through 20 a few times but the mainsheet would have been started a bit and it was just flaking off on the wind. Good power on the reach/ run though smile.gif
I deliberately rigged our gaff fairly high peaked for a topsail and our main is large, so for cruising we would normally just do without and still go nearly as well.
compromise.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Oddly enough, considering that our boats are rather different, my answer almost the same as John's, except that I do use the topsail, cruising, in light conditions, as we have a smaller mainsail than Waione.

I am going to lenthen the mast head, as suggested by Ed Burnett, so as to abolish the topsail yard, and I expect to fly the topsail a lot more often once we have done that, as it will be so easy to hoist and to drop.

[martin schulz]

Hmm - first I must say that pics of WAIONE helped me a lot when I tried to get a design for my 2-yard Topsail.

But I am still not overly happy with the cut of it. looking at these pics make me think the yard should be much higher, but then the jackyard won't sit on the Gaff.

Any ideas?

http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid142/p8560f20342cc8e9f6f976d13871af20a/f6ac40d3.jpg

http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid85/pbf5f880910cd548d9bcb74e9ada74949/fac6cf85.jpg

[ 10-12-2004, 04:44 AM: Message edited by: martin schulz ]

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Martin, I think you can certainly set it higher; in the photos it seems to me that the topsail sheet is leading up from the jackyard to the gaff.

I find that the jackyard will tolerate a very wide range of sheet positions; in this respect it's better than a "simple" topsail.

I needed to ask friends to take pictures of us with topsail set on two or three different occasions before we found the "right" places for the halyard and sheet; unfortunately the pictures are all "chemical" type!