reef points

[gert]

How are the little lines that pass thru the reef gringles (sp?) fastened to the sail? (held in place)

[ 01-24-2006, 10:13 AM: Message edited by: gert ]

[Thorne]

With a reef knot.

Now, who's buried in Grant's Tomb?

;-0 )

http://www.realknots.com/knots/reefk.htm

All silliness aside, was your question more specific? Different reef nettles and reefing systems often use different knots...

I usually use a slip knot, but whatever you use must be easy to untie with one hand in strong wind!





[ 01-23-2006, 06:34 PM: Message edited by: Thorne ]

[Figment]

cringles.

[Hwyl]

If you are asking how they are attached to the sail there are usually reef (square) knots on either side of the sail cringle.

Stepping back, if you have a sail with the little holes (sewn cringles) but no strings (nettles) I'd leave it that way. They only cause noise and slow you down. When the sail is reefed and the nettles are already in the ail, there's a tendency to tie the nettles too tight. They should have no weight on them, they're only there to bundle the excess sail.

That's why I prefer not to have them. I reef the sail and then when everyone is relaxed I'll think about lacing up the excess.

[Jonathan Kabak]

On large traditionally made sails, the nettle is passed through the reef point and then secured by one of three methods: Method one, is to tie an overhand knot in the nettle on each side of the point. The second is to create a crows foot in the line and stich it to the sail. The final is to seize the nettle to the sail.

I hope this answers your question.

Jonathan

[almeyer]

I've got a small sail, but I'm using something similar to what Jonathan is describing. The nettle is passed through the grommet and each side has a figure-eight knot next to the grommet to keep it in place. When the sail is reefed, I use a slippery reef knot so it can be untied easily.
Al

[Ian McColgin]

The question was oddly asked so the confusion evinced by the first few answers is easily understood. None the less, remarks about untying the knot one handed in a blow seem odd. One is more likely to be tying in the reef in a blow. The slip knot illustrated is one of two ways to tie a slippery overhand knot and neither has anything to do with reefing. Along the same line, I'm unsure how one would tie a reef knot on either side of the cringle as the reef knot involves two ends. The reef knot is the one and only correct way to secure the two ends of the reef pendant when tying in the reef.

There are lots of local usages for words and I'd hesitate to say that any one is wrong, but around here a "reef pendent" is the line that passes through the reef cringle or grommet while the "nettle" refers to the result of counter-twisting the pendent to make three bights in the strands leap out. It's more commonly called a "crow's foot." These may be stitched to the sail on one side of the cringle to keep the pendent from wandering when a reef is not laid in.

Whipping could be used to keep the pendant in place but that seems to me oddly clunkey compared to the crow's foot or overhand knot. And I mean "oddly because one normally needs the whipping in either overly heavy line or doubled up to fill the cringle's hole and that manages, to my eye, to look stranger than an overhand knot.

Figure eight knots work but I prefer a simple overhand knot on each side of the cringle as that is suitable for both braided and cable laid pendants. And I use each because it helps for each line of reef pendants to be easily distinguishable by feel from the others. I usually go cable-laid whipped end for first reef, braided whipped end for second, cable-laid crowned end for third, and braided overhand knot end for fourth. Each line of reef pendants is longer than the one below. I size them by my ability to feel them hanging down below the boom when the sail is lowered, which works out to about three times longer than is absolutely needed to actually tie in the reef. In addition to making finding the pendants easy in a squall while hanging from the boom with rain water running up one's sleeves, the extra length allows the loosely tied reef knots to stay in place rather than slip out while under weigh.

I use reef knots - square knots - for tying in the reef. I've never had any problems releasing them, even after a few days reefed in. When I was young I once tried using slippery reef knots but gave up after one managed to untie itself at about ohdarkthirty on a run down Long Island Sound to Block.

The best reefing is some form of slab reefing and it's true that the reef pendants mostly contain the bunt of the sail. They certainly should not be tied in so tightly that they create stress points in the sail. However, I favor having the pendants (and absolutely the clew and tack lines) permanently attached as it's a huge pain to install them on the fly in a blow.

But then, I sail where reefing is common and thus am prejudiced towards approaches that work always, even in nasty sleet at ohdarkthirty.

G'luck

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Norseman's photo is what I should expect to see.

[Hwyl]

I agree with Andrew and should have said in my earlier post "overhand knots" and not "reef knots". I'd reiterate that I don't like them, and much prefer to set the reef without them and lace in the reef later.

I am fairly experiened in this and I agree with Ian, that it's often in the cold and at night when these things happen.

[Todd Bradshaw]

Both the words "cringle" and "grommet" get tossed around so much that right or wrong, they've almost become generic for any hole in a sail. As far as I know, the only correct definition for a cringle is an anchor point at the corner or edge of a sail woven with a single strand taken from a chunk of three-strand line. It connects to the sail by passing through a couple reinforced holes (grommets, hand-sewn rings, etc.) usually over a roped edge and when finished, stands proud forming a bump with a hole in it (and often a captive thimble) at the edge or corner. The corner shown at left here is a cringle.


"Grommets" these days, are most often two-piece metal gizmos that sandwich the cloth to reinforce a hole. There are washer grommets and spur grommets. Spurs have small teeth that penetrate and grab the fabric in the process of being set. They are much stronger than washer grommets and thus the grommets of choice for sailmaking. The cringle in the photo is anchored to a network of five small (#000) spur grommets to spread the stress out over a larger area.

There are also "rope grommets" which are woven like cringles from a single strand of rope or twine, but when done appear similar to a loop of three-strand line. Little ones, woven from marline or twine are called "penny grommets". These are dime grommets (due to inflation )


Bigger rope grommets can be used for various things - mast hoops on small boats, doubled back through themselves and a sail's corner ring to form a becket to fit over a sprit, etc.

The fitting at right of the cringle above, is a Hand-Sewn-Ring. This one is typical of the type used for sail corners. It has a solid brass ring sewn around a hole in the fabric and then a brass liner is pressed into it to protect the stitching from chafe. They can range fom about dime-sized to over 2" open diameter, depending upon the job they perform and cloth weight. Big, important ones may be even further protected from chafe by being partially covered with leather. Hand sewn rings (as shown in Norseman's photo) can also be built using a flexible ring like a rope grommet as their core. They're light, strong, inexpensive, don't tend to make stiff spots in the sail and are kind of fun to do if you're into sailmaking, rope-fancywork, etc. Here's a rope grommet being sewn-in. Technically at that point it's probably no longer a grommet, but has become a hand-sewn-ring. As long as they aren't used in situations where there is a lot of chafe or heavy stress loading, they are quite durable. Sometimes you'll see hand-sewn-rings shown on sailplans by the abreviation "H.S.R.". Usually, it denotes the type with the brass ring and liner.


A reef line is made up of the reef tack and reef clew assemblies (reinforcing fabric patches combined with a ring of some sort - H.S.R., modern, stainless and plastic pressed ring, cringle with thimble, or on smaller sails, a spur grommet). The intermediate tie-off holes along the reef line are the "points". They're reinforced by grommets, hand-sewn rings or pressed modern rings. Each point assembly will also have either the small extra layers of fabric patching or it will lie along a reef band. This is a continuous narrow strip or two of fabric crossing the sail from reef tack to reef clew. Bands are sometimes used on vertically-cut sails to take some of the reef outhaul stress off of the panel seams when the reef line becomes the working foot of the sail. This one has a reef band (it also has small patches under the band to generate adequate fabric thickness and strength to hold the grommets because it's light fabric).


The strings which hang down from the points and which are used to bundle the excess fabric are called the "nettles" though there are probably more sailors these days who just call them "the little tie thingies" than call them nettles - and if I ask my customers whether they want the nettles installed on their new reef line - they just get a blank look on their faces....

Nettles are middled through the points and secured either by seizing them just below the ring or grommet (with a few stitches actually passing through the sail and patch fabric) or with a stopper knot on either side of the sail, next to the point. The proper stopper knot is the one which prevents that sized line from pulling through that sized hole - be it an single overhand knot, a figure-8 or a monkey's fist if you have to. Personally, I use knots since the sound of reef nettles repeatedly slapping against a Dacron sail in light air bugs me. I leave them in the boat with one stopper knot pre-tied and put them in and add the other stopper before heading out if I think I might need them. When putting in a reef, I tie their ends together under the sail or boom with a square knot.

As I said in the beginning, some of these terms tend to get misused a lot, but most of us probably understood just about everything in this thread because they've been misused so much as to become rather generic. As far as I know though, that is the technical skinny on reef line parts and their proper names.

[ 01-24-2006, 07:19 PM: Message edited by: Todd Bradshaw ]

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Thank you, Todd.

The reef cringles are of course two in number for each reef - a clew cringle and a tack cringle - and the reef pendants go through them.

[John B]

I know we've discussed the Nettles word before. At the end of that discussion i think we came to the conclusion that its an American term ?
I only ever heard of them as points.

Andrew, have you ever heard the word used in JOE.
The other comment I'd make with reference to the earlier comments by Hwyl and others... an addition to theirs, is that some boats ( like mine ) ie edwardian gaff cutter with typically over long boom, do actually need the points tied in as part of the structure of the rig. In other words, the scantlings of the boom is not such that it will safely allow the conversion to a loose footed sail( which is what happens when you reef without the points)and the compression load that goes with that.

[Hwyl]

Point taken. I'm not nettled.

[John B]

I can't think of a smart reply to that.
I just pole sanded and painted a ceiling. I think I'd better go to the grog shop and buy a slab.

[Dave Hadfield]

Great explanation, and lovely work, Todd.

Thanks.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

John B - I think the reef points, which is indeed what we call them here in JOE, may once have been made from nettles; i.e. from sennit.

East Anglians do not use the reef knot - we tie one with both ends slipped i.e. a bow.

[Douglass]

Can anyone comments on the pros and cons of using a tack hook rather than a tack pennant? I'm thinking of adding this feature to my cat boat.

Douglass

[Ian McColgin]

I hate reefing tack hooks. If you've a sail with a jack line, guarenteed to foul. It turns reefing from one hand at the hallyards and pendant end location - in a cat boat and others often safely in the cockpit but otherwise at the mast - a multi-person charlie foxtrot as one struggles with the hallyard and another tries to get the flogging bit of luff onto the hook and then staying there while the clew is pulled tight and still staying when the luff is trimmed.

The one place where they make any sense is on fully crewed racing boats, that use slab reefing, especially with kelvar sails, where luff and foot tensions are winch loaded in the extreme.

Especially on a cat boat, the pendants, both tack and clew, ought to come down to a series of six cleats (real cat boats have at least three reefs) on the boom just above the bridge deck and handy to peak and throat hallyards and the topping lifts.

I find, by the way, that it's really convenient to be trimming all pendants with my left hand while easing the sail down with my right hand. As they snug up, bottom first, the snug are dropped and the rest I just keep trimming. It helps the leech lay down nicely on the boom and with proper lazy lifts it obviates the need to get the sail stops on in any hurry - a very nice feature if you're coming into a dock dead-stick and really don't need the sail's bunt making a mess of things.

Finally, those six dangling lines make finastkind sail stops, so there's no extra clutter and you're sure to lay them out with fair leads before hoisting.

No hooks for this old dog.

G'luck

[John B]

They usually get called rams horns here.. the hooks as part of the gooseneck. You see them on most modern boats.Thats what you mean I assume?

I have a hook gimmicked up on a short lanyard I use and it just hangs there and doesn't drop out. So that means you don't get that particular frustration.
One advantage I find is that you can adjust the length. I wanted a fraction more lift in my boom at the clew end and the short tack lanyard achieves that.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

And I have roller reefing...

You can keep faffing about with reef tackles, reef pendants, bee blocks and the rest of it. Would not touch it with a barge pole!

[jlaprad]

Todd, I know this is an old thread but I am new here and have been searching for the correct way to tie in a reef to my balance lug sail. Should I tie the nettles just under the sail itself or under the sail and boom? Is there a proper way and does one way or the other help keep the sail better trimmed? Thanks...

[Ian McColgin]

Tie under the foot, not under the boom. That way the foot's outhaul tension and the tension reef clew to tack share some load and you don't have excess strain on each reef point - excess reinforced by the unyielding nature of the boom. Further, it's easier to get the pendents tied correctly as it amounts to tieing tightly around the sail's bunt while if you go around the boom it's too easy to get some points tighter than others.

G'luck