Halyards

As a rigger, I find myself espousing the value of line and hardware that's smaller and lighter almost daily. Today I had the chance to put my money where my mouth is, when it came to Shields 88's halyards.

88 was a perfect candidate for going lightweight, as the halyards were pretty much the same technical vintage as the boat itself. The spinnaker halyard was a gigantic 1/2" poly halyard, which has the virtues of being stretchy, heavy and slow over sheaves. The main and jib were wire-rope halyards, which always makes me cringe when I see them on a racing boat. Now, wire-rope really has it's uses, cruising rigging (where the wire wears better for extreme long term use) and boats with halyard locks being a few examples. But. 88 is not cruising around the world, and it doesn't have a halyard lock (dammit). In addition, the wire portion of the halyard was really short; on both halyards the wire only went half the length of the mast. Why, I dont know, but this setup combined the worst of both wire and rope. It was heavy, hard on sheaves/mast/gear, and stretchy. The only thing I can possibly say that was good about 88's old rigging was that it lasted, and the shackles weren't too gigantically oversized.

just what you want on a boat, heavy, stretchy, sharp.

What I wanted for 88's new lines, was to be as light and efficient as possible while still being easy to handle, and with a reasonable lifespan. Since rigging is my business, I figured I could go all out and make the perfect halyards, even if they ended up being a bit of overkill.

The main and jib are New England V100 (vectran core), which has been stripped to save weight (and windage on the jib) I wanted to stay light with the shackles, and used Tylaska's P4 polycarbonate spool shackles. To keep the halyards around for a while, I added back cover to the last 5' or so, so that the halyards wouldn't chafe at sheaves and exits, and also so they could be skyed to protect the uncovered portion completely from UV. The spin halyard is New England Endura Braid, stripped and recovered the same way as the other two. It has a stopper ball (the shields has a really odd halyard spectacle that can get jammed with a shackle) and a standard snap shackle with swivel. The topper is Endurabraid as well, 1/4" in size. All the halyards are 5/16". They are extremely low stretch, the small diameter runs very quickly over sheaves and they're quite light.

Lighter, stronger, and dare I say it prettier.

While I had everything out of the mast, I wanted to weigh both sets of halyards, just to see what kind of real world difference I could expect. I expected a couple pounds difference, but was surprised to see that the new gear weighed just more than half! The old halyards weighed 13.5lbs, and the new lines came in at a svelte 7.5. While I'm happy to save 7.5 lbs anywhere, taking that much weight out of the rig is huge. I realized only after uploading the photo that 88's topping lift and downhaul were included in the 7.5 figure, so we probably saved a bit more.

I'm not going to make any performance predictions on this change (ha) but the formula thats generally bandied about is that taking 1lb out of the rig is equivalent to adding 7lbs to keel, in terms of righting moment. Should we ever win a race by 15' or so, I will credit the halyards.

Pull halyards out of mast, run messenger line. 1hr

While there, I took care of a couple more odds and ends. Fitted the underdeck control boxes. They're going to work quite well, once I make a few small mods to get them a) at the right height b)angled up to where the trimmer sits on the windward rail. Also started drilling and routing the holes in the deck, so as soon as it gets a bit warmer I can fill them with epoxy and fair.


Fit Control Boxes/Drill out holes&remove core 2hrs

Deck Paint Prep/Boom/Control Lines

Missed a couple of updates since the camera charger went AWOL. Have a new one now so I can get back to photo-heavy articles about sanding.

Deck Paint Prep:

The last paintjob on the deck was bad, really bad. I initially want to leave it crappy white and fix it next year, but a couple things intervened. 1) I had the toerails off, along with a lot of other deck gear 2) The bow had to be fixed, 3) The previous paint job was peeling off. So, on we go to another project!

I started sanding off the old paint, which is a pretty slow process. Our local glass/paint expert Mick (from Lakeshore Marine) happened by, and before I knew it he had scraped off a 1x1' area of deck using only a dull razor blade. He knows from experience that the upside of an old crappy paint job is that it comes off fairly easily! So I decided to scrape the old paint, then sand the gelcoat underneath.

About halfway done I'd say, as I've scraped up to the front of the cockpit. A good carbide scraper means this goes faster than sanding. It's still going to need some time with the DA sander, but only what's required to prep for primer (and take out a few scrapes). The photo below shows progress, the white on the deck is interlux brightsides, the tan is the original gelcoat.

In the meantime, I've started working on the holes in the deck. Some of these are from old hardware and will be filled/painted over, and some are going to be reused, but with a disc of thickened epoxy inside the deck surrounding the hole, to keep water from getting into the deck core. For both the process is similar, overdrill the top of the hole, scrape out the core around the hole, fill with epoxy and sand flush. For the ones I'll be reusing I'll redrill a new hole through the center of the epoxy disc.

Scrape Deck Paint: 8hrs (partial)


BOOM!

Our old boom was pretty lousy. It had poor control lines, heavy hardware and was generally ugly. I scrounged up an old Shields boom section (thanks Skip!) that was in better condition than ours, and added new and old hardware to it.

I originally planned to do away with the heavy end casting on the aft end of the boom. New shields booms have an exit block in the top, and the back edge is bias cut to match the angle of the deck. It looks cool, allows access to the outhaul internals, and if you drop the boom on the deck it _may_ do less damage.

Unfortunately our boom (and all old booms) was too short for that. If we put an exit block in, even at the very back edge of the boom, we wouldn't be able to pull the sail all the way aft. This made the use of the end casting neccesary, but aw well. Maybe next year I get a new boom section and get it right.

The old boom had a very outdated outhaul setup. It was totally external, and had a wire pennant leading to a harken 5:1 magic box for purchase. I decided to go with an all internal purchase and increase it to 8:1. At the same time I improved the outhaul cleating setup. This boom (and most) has a horn cleat, which is difficult to adjust and means you have to really lean in/get into the boat to do it. On all the boats I've sailed on, this means the outhaul tends to get adjusted exactly once per leg of the race course.

The other problem with the boom was that it was just barely long enough to fit the sail (when pulled to max tight), and the shackle on the outhaul pennant was pretty long. I went with the shortest profile shackle I could find, which turned out to be a Tylaska S5 spool shackle on a 4mm SK75 pennant. This will let us pull the sail all the way to the class legal limit. At the same time I filed out the inside of the end casting in order to install a Harken ball bearing sheave, which replaced a really nasty old fiberglass one which was starting to fracture.


Outhaul shackle, hooked to mainsheet block to keep it out of the way

wow look at that weight savings... worth at least 6 knots

The internal purchase is all dyneema and harken carbo blocks, cascaded to 8:1. The cleat is a pivoting exit block, which means that the added purchase can be easily controlled from the rail.

beats the heck out of a horn cleat

The stainless bail on the boom for attaching the vang was in bad condition, so I decided to replace it with a dyneema strop attached to the mainsheet bail throughbolt. Since I was upgrading the purchase to 8:1 anyway, I incorporated the bail right into the cascade block, using a Harken 57mm Ti-Lite. I love these blocks, they're light, strong and the soft attachment means you have lots of ways to secure them.

All the hardware was removed from the boom and reattached. A shocking amount of it was either the wrong fastener (head wrong, wrong size!, not actually threaded to anything) so I ended up drilling out and retapping most of the holes. Everything was put back in with blue loctite and/or lanocote unde the heads.

It's great to have a project done with and put away.

Rerig Boom: 8 hrs

Although this was pretty straightforward, the extremely cold temperature in the yard made this difficult. Although it was up to 28 outside, it was a chilly 12 degrees in the storage building 88's living in. Touching a an aluminum boom at this temp is actually quite painful, not to mention the cold really slows down your reflexes. I had to run the purchases a couple times when my clumsy hands kept messing things up. Wish I could do this in summer but thats when I make my money!

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Jib Halyard Control

One of the most important controls on the Shields is also one of the hardest to adjust. Class rules say the only legal method of changing jib halyard tension is the winch, which must be located belowdeck on the wooden kingpost. On every Shields I've been on, this means that the jib halyard is on the port side of the kingpost, down low by the floorboards. It's usually locked off using a cam or horn cleat.

This arrangement really sucks for racing. Anytime you want to change the jib depth, someone has to go below and crank it up. In a perfect world I'd put a deflection style adjuster with 6:1 purchase on there, but class rules say not. Next best thing to me was relocating the jib halyard, and giving it a cleat and line location that could be controlled while sitting on the highside.

The halyards in the mast will be switched so that the jib exits on the stbd side and goes to a winch which is higher up on the king post. This means that the winch can be controlled by leaning in from the stbd rail.

On Shields 90, we had a spinlock clutch mounted after the winch for locking the jib, which I found to be a lot better than the cam cleat on 150. The cam cleats can be knocked loose too easily, and sometimes it's tough to tail the halyard into the cleat.

Mounting the clutch this way is bizarre, as usually clutches are mounted between the winch and the mast, but for on 90 it worked pretty well having the clutch on the king post. You could tail the halyard better, and ease it with tension on the tail.

For 88 I decided to try and improve on that, and made an aluminum bracket to mount the clutch in a way that kept the halyard accessible. In this mounting the halyard exits at deck level, pointing up. The clutch is accessible from both rails for easing, and on stbd tack you can use the winch handle from above deck.

Jib Halyard Clutch and Mount: 6 hrs (had to make this twice as I messed up the lead from the winch on the first try)

Control Boxes

The current best way to rig the Shields backstay and traveler controls is to mount them remotely under the side decks. Then you can control and cleat then from the opposite windward rail.

I really agonized over how to do this, and wanted to make up a large custom control tray out of carbon fiber. This would be quite cool, and make for a better cleating location. However, that would take a whole lot of time, and I already had the standard pieces from Cape Cod. They're aluminum, but not terribly heavy.

I'm going to have all the traveler purchase below deck, with Endura 12 pennants running above deck. Both traveler and backstay will have ratchet blocks to make trimming easier, and I'm considering mounting the twing cleats on the side of the control boxes. This is what they look like now. The two carbos in the middle are ratchets, the double block is actually from our old traveller car. The cleats have the extreme angle fairlead so the lines can be controlled from the front or back of the boat. One the forward side of the control box I'm mounting Harken Micro Carbo Cams in Extreme Angle Fairleads, and 29mm Ti Lite Carbo Blocks. This is for controlling the twing lines, which are going to be led below deck. Most boats either have the twings above deck (which means big nasty wood blocks to sit on) or routed below deck (to cleats awkwardly located underneath, up by the shrouds). Having trimmed spin and driven lots of Shields, I know this doesn't work all that well, as its too crowded and theres too much going on for people to be messing with these. I'm leading it aft so that either the driver, the trimmer or the 3rd crew can work the twings. This seems smart to me now, but we'll have to see how it goes on the water!

Load Control Boxes: 4hrs

Deck Hardware

Over last two weeks removed all the deck hardware. Not the easiest job when you're by yourself, but a vice grip (or 6) sure helps!

Taking care of odds and ends to get ready for the season, mooring bridle, partner box, control line shelves. Pics to come.

Remove deck hardware: 12hrs

Fun Stuff/Mission Creep

The "Fun Stuff" in the title is an indication that I'm getting started on the part of the boat that I have a clue about, and starting the many rigging projects. The photo below was my "kid at christmas" moment, as I've got that and 2 other big boxes of cordage and hardware for 88.
What we've got on the plate for 88:

-All new control layout and purchase systems: There's only so many different ways to rig a Shields, but I'm after getting it perfect. I've sailed on these boats for a number of years and have a fair idea of what should be where. Means nothing till we try it out though!

-New Standing Rigging: Like a lot of Shields, this one has the oddest old turnbuckles and standing rigging hardware. Theres a combination of center screw, open body and lifeline (!) turnbuckles, all held together with a whole bunch of toggles. It's all overdue for replacement, and it can all be simplified and made to the correct length. Have a prototype Hayn calibrated turnbuckle for the headstay, which is quite exciting.

-New Running Rigging: This ones a no brainer, as the old lines are usually giant (we have a 5/8" spinnaker halyard!), old, wire (eck) or just lousy.
Halyards: New England's V100 for Main and Jib, with Tylaska Spool shackles at the ends. The lines will be stripped in the middle, and covered where the lines are handled, as well as cover at the shackle ends. This is overkill, but I want the boats rigging to be representative of the best out there. Adding cover to the shackle end means the halyards are chafe guarded at the ends, and they can also be skyed when stored to avoid UV damage on the stripped portion.
Sheets and Control Lines: This ones easy, we're using a lot of NERopes for this, and I'm excited to try out their Flight Line for tapered spinnaker sheets. Even the custom double tapered spin sheet I make is heavier than Flight Line!
Shackles: Going to use soft shackles wherever appropriate. It's not that the Shields is that reactive to extra weight, but again, I want the boat to be as well rigged and current as possible.
-Mast Partner System: This year we're going to try a box shaped mast partner with raised sides. This is good because it lets you have easy to fit/tight clearance shims, and it also makes a coaming to keep water out. The system I'm putting together will hopefully work great, and be a simple bolt on for other boats looking to upgrade. Currently we have an irregular cracked ovalish hole, so anything will be an improvement!

Misc: Things like the radiused raised traveler with most of the purchase below deck, redoing an old boom, etc.


MISSION CREEP

Ahh, growing projects. Anyone with a boat knows the old "as long as________, then might as well _______" It's the attitude that takes simple project boats and turns them into wrecks that take years, or worse, end up less complete than when they started. Hoping that's not the case, but our latest bit of growing plans involve painting the boat.

The deck is in good structural shape, but the paint is not good. From anecdotal evidence, the previous owner bought a gallon of Brightside, brush and a case of beer, and painted the boat on the mooring. Apparently this involved swimming, as he painted himself into the end of the boat opposite from the dinghy! Unfortunately, his purchases didn't include primer, sandpaper or even soap. The paint comes off if you look at it hard, and is generally damn ugly. Sadly, it's applied over pretty good gelcoat, which isn;t going to be recoverable.

Have changed the paint plan for the topsides yet again, now we're looking like:


In the meantime, between customer projects I managed to sneak in about 8hrs on 88. Keels prepped for epoxy (need a couple warm days) and the deck gears been mostly removed. All the old holes are getting filled/faired and then new gear fitted before the deck gets painted. Thats a bit backwards, but I've got to get as much done before painting as possible. This weeks screwy between wedding stuff and strictly sail stuff, I have very little time for any actual work, for customers or myself.

Backstay gland upgrade

Most stock Shields backstays have a wire pennant that comes through the back deck via a deck casting. Inside, the wire makes a 120 degree turn and rides over a solid piece of steel. This area has a lot of friction and chafe. This is a problem are because:

1)the friction makes it hard to adjust the backstay. Even with 8:1 purchase it can be hard for the main trimmer to adjust this as much as they should. A lower friction setup makes it work easier and faster, and therefore the crew is more likely to use it!
2)the chafe means that the backstay pennant wires wear out much faster than they should, which can potentially bring the rig down. Ask Mike S about the time Redfeather lost the backstay (but not the rig) in 25kts: not fun!

According to the class measurer, replacing this casting with an exit block is verboten, but the stock casting can be used with a sheave in it. I sent ours out to Bam at Oyster Bay, who is a wholesale vendor of mine. He did a really nice job of machining a groove in the casting, and putting in a Harken 307 sheave.

In this photo you can see the underside of the casting, and the new sheave.

We've got some pretty big projects in the works over the next 2 months, which will all be featured here, so check back soon!

Deck Hardware/California Shields

First visit to the boat of the year today! I thought I would take advantage of an unseasonably warm forecast and get the fairing compound on the keel, but it was a little too warm! The air temp was in the 60's, which would be great save for all the condensation in the boat yard. EVERYTHING was wet, and the boats were sweating water in sheets. Ok, no glasswork!

It was a nice day to be in the yard, so I removed all the deck hardware off the aft deck, and pulled out a few items I wanted to work on at home.

The spinnaker pole was in good shape, had nice Forespar UXP ends on it and a thin walled tube. Working with the bowteam/fiance, I set it up the way she likes it. Two trip lines with stopper balls for grip, downhaul bridle (pink) with bungee cord retractors and a topping lift ring lashed in the center. Can't think of any better/simpler way to do it! For big breeze/reaches we'll tie on a spectra topping lift bridle.

I took the tiller off, as it was in the way. Took it home to work on, and realized the tiller is fine as is! Thats the very first thing on this boat thats been ok out of the box. The rudder head needs some washers to take the slop out of the steering, but thats an easy one. It's on our porch right now, being wonderfully complete.

I pulled off the backstay casting, which will be sent to Bam at Oyster Bay so he can add a sheave. I asked the class measurer if a harken exit block could be substituted, and was denied. It's too bad as a Harken 310 would be lower friction and larger radius, and probably a safer all around solution than the clunky casting the boats came with in the 60's. Ah well, at least all 260 Shields are in the same boat.

Removed the bent stern mooring cleat, and will replace with a lighter nylon cleat. Wow big weight savings!

The old spinnaker turning block hardware was pretty old and seemed ready to go. It was 2 teak pads, with really ancient padeyes and bullet blocks. I think I'll put in a better padeye and use a Harken 57mm Ti Lite or Karver block in its place. Always nice to have a simple solution thats stronger,simpler and lighter!

Total time today: 4 hrs (+4hrs Jan 9, 3hrs Jan 13)

Niki and I were in CA for her winter break, and stopped by the harbor (of course). We were looking around at a couple boats when I heard my name from up the dock! A dock in Monterrey CA is just about the last place I expect to run into someone, but there was Garth Hobson of the MPYC Shields fleet. I've run into Garth at pretty much every Shields Nationals since 02, and he showed us around their boats. Shields fleet 12 has 8 boats that are all on the same docks. Seems like a great place to sail and they sure seem to like it. Heres a photo of Garth and the 103 crew, about to go out for a sail.

Sweating the (very) small stuff- Rigging Update

Sunday morning, nothing going on, but the yards closed.. what to do?

Had an hour or so this morning with nothing going on, so I decided to poke around the box of hardware I pulled off the boat. Tackled a couple of the really tiny projects that I would probably usually save until last minute.

Headknocker: For those that haven't sailed on Shields, they have a couple unique rigging bits. One of my favorites is the mainsheet adjustment. Unlike nearly every other racing boat out there, the Shields mainsheet cleat hangs off the boom, on the aptly nicknamed headknocker. Adjustment is made direct from the boom, sometimes with 2 or 3 people pulling from the rail. Also, most headknocker setups use this Nash trigger cleat, which allows you to ease the line by pulling straight back on the clear. This opens the jaws, and lets you do small adjustments kind of like a ratchet. Ours was ok, but the Nash cleat was jammed , and I'm not so crazy about the sheave. Like most things, the cleats respond well to being taken apart and cleaned. I happened to have a spare spring, which was good, as one of ours was strangely missing. Also odd was the lack of an eyestrap on the cleat, but luckily I had one as well. The sheave is a plain bearing plastic sheave, which I'll replace with a ball bearing sheave as soon as I find one that fits. I had one that went on 150, but for the life of me can't recall where it came from.

Cunningham: You know it's really a slow day when someone makes a post about the cunningham! There's actually a couple details here that are indicative of how I want to rig this boat. The original blocks were ok, the line was disgusting and there was a wire pennant going to the hook. While I'd like to put some nice tiny carbos on here, I don't want to fix what isn't broken.Details: top pennant is 1/8" New England Endura 12. Plenty strong, if I carried smaller I'd use that. Although they're heavy I decided to reuse the hook on the top for sail changing convenience. The control line is just a small length of Swiftcord from my line tails box. The line's been reeved with the blocks at right angles. For any 4:1 or higher purchase using side by side blocks I find this works great; avoids tangles and friction from the lines crossing. I didn't splice this line as it's totally unneccesary for the loads involved, and a proper splice would bulk up the line. The most interesting thing is the soft shackle on the bottom. I'll use these wherever possible on this boat. This lets the block articulate like a swivel shackle, but is less weight and definitely higher on cool factor. Here's another shot of the type of soft shackle I like to make:

These are made with an unstitched bury splice at one end, and a stitched knot at
I also pulled the sheave boxes from the main and jib halyards. Class rules and the mast dictate that you use these Schaefer boxes with a combination wire/rope groove. This boat had one very new sheave, and one that was very worn and probably original. The old wire/rope halyards really do a number on sheaves, and I wasn't sure if I could clean up the groove enough to use a new tapered halyad. After a good bit of sanding the surface was nice and smooth and ready for reinstallation.
I wanted these perfect, as a sheave worn by wire will absolutely slaughter a tapered halyard if not prepped right. One of the common customer service issues I have is with people changing their wire/rope halyards to fiber. Before I make the halyard I always ask about the sheave condition and point out that it probably needs sanding at the least. Lots of people listen and check/fix the sheaves. More often though, they say "oh its fine" without having any idea what its actually like, it just doesn't seem that important to them. Sometimes they're right, and theres no problem, sometimes they call me back hoping I'll replace the ripped-up halyard for free. I've seen some truly nasty looking sheaves, usually after someone wants to know why their halyards look like they've been attached by sharks.

Anyway, thats a pretty weak update, so I'll post this prospective paint scheme. My graphic skills suck, but Bill at www.knockaboutsloops.blogspot.com loaned me his line drawing for testing paint colors, and even returned the lines to one design configuration, thanks Bill!
I really like gray boats, and haven't seen a Shields done that way yet. This probably won't happen until next fall, due to money/time/temperature concerns. The topsides and deck don't look great, but I'd rather put time and money into speed and strength, and I can live with an ugly boat. For a season anyway.