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A couple new upgrades on the boat this year in addition to the things seen on these pages in the past. First, here's a photo Niki panorama'd while we were following Skip and our (illegal, rusty, terrifying) trailers on launch day.
Not new, but never discussed is our "pulpit". This is just a piece of bungee run from the top of the headstay swage, to either teak toerail. It does 2 things:
-when the spinnaker pole is stored on deck (racing upwind) the back end is clipped to to the stbd upper shroud, which leaves the front end free to move around. The bungee keeps the pole tip from falling over. Some teams clip the pole to the lower (further aft) shroud, so that the upper shroud chainplate keeps it in place. This is dumb because: if the pole does get overboard it bends the pole in half, or worse, tears/bends/breaks the chainplate. Happened to a boat in our fleet 3 years ago.
-the bungee also keeps the hanks on the jib from sliding down over the swage fitting and jamming when the jib is doused. This sucks when you're rounding a leeward mark and the jib won't go all the way up!
The blue line is our jib halyard. 5/32" vectran core, with tylaska spool shackle. It's a bit bigger than it needs to be, but is very low stretch. The shackles great, light and have had zero problems.
The red line is our downhaul, which we wrap over the mooring line cleat and then attach to the headstay to take the slack out.
This shows the toggles I had to add to our shrouds. Ugh. On one hand, they're ugly, but on the other hand it would be silly to replace shrouds with less than 25 days of use.
Also visible is some of the rare non-Harken gear on the boat: Holt Allen snatch blocks for the twings. The twings run through the deck to an upright lead block which is epoxied in place, then back to the traveler/backstay control box.
Here you see our take on 2:1 jib sheeting. It takes some explaining if you haven't sailed an Etchells, Soling or other type keelboat. The shackle near the mast gets clipped to the clew of the sail. It has 2 40mm carbo blocks on it. The sheet (continuous) is deadended on the car, runs to the clew block, down to the car block (another 40mm Carbo Ti-Lite), then sideways to the athwartship tracks, to an 57mm Autoratchet, then to cleats mounted on angled risers on the console. It would be better, and easier, to just replace the jib winches with the rathchets, but the class rules don't allow it. Unfortunately they don't allow a fine-tune either, which would be wicked cool and easy on the trimmer.
I'm holding off really pushing this to our fleet until we see how it works. I think it'll be great, but the Shields jib is near the top of what I consider "hand tensionable" with 2:1 and big breeze. At 25kts, our jib sheet should have around 350lbs of load, with a 2:1 that's at least 175lbs on the sheet, way more than a person can trim alone. In that much breeze I think we'll probably go to the winch. In 15kts though, the 2:1 sheet load is more like 65lbs, which is managable for sure. Depending on how it works I think we'll probably use the 2:1 with ratchets until big breeze, then run it to the winch, possibly going back to 1:1 for that.
Here's a couple new things:
-neat Harken sticker
-Tacktick Micro Compass, yay! I really like this thing. Custom cat themed mount.
-4:1 cunningham. The bowman (Niki) complained when I talked about moving the cunningham to an aft led remote cleat (not enough to do upwind apparently) , but I had already sold our old cunningham to Shields 45, so had to come up with something. Heres a neat system that is compact, leads to side easier, and is 4:1 so the bowman gets a workout. No more complaining about not having enough to do.
-In lieu of using a triangle plate for the vang, or just tying the cascade on, I use a split tail cascade line, which takes the 2:1 to both sides of the bottom fiddle block. The split tail prevents chafe and is less weight/junk than the tri plate. Proud of this idea as I've never seen it elsewhere and it works great! Right now we're trying it with soft shackles, but Niki doesn't like them and they're a bit bulky. I may go to a regular lashing for the attachment.
The console and coaming. Note the continuous jib sheet (gray) and the risers for angling it up a bit. The angle is set so that the jib trimmer (3rd spot) can control the line from their spot on the rail. The blue line exiting the coaming is the topping lift, now exiting belowdecks. This saves an exit in the side of the mast, and also means the 3rd spot can raise the topping lift while the 4th spot is in the boat helping the spinnaker out, and vice versa on the drop. Red line in the middle is downhaul.
Our jib halyard on the clutch worked well last year, and should be better this year since I peened the winch drums for more grip.
Will be nice to have the cockpit step back, as last year we just lashed the compass on, which blocked it.
Thats it for now, hoping to go sail this week! Also recently completed were some sail fixes, handled by North Sails midwest. They replaced our old mains window, which was taped together, and also fixed the new mans bolt rope problem. According to the tech at North, when tension was released from the rope, it shot inside the sail 14"! Jeez.
