Pictures will have to wait at least until Wednesday - unless I can drag
Julie out there before then - if I had my druthers, we'd be out there every
evening as long as this weather lasts. No rain and we may have to pull the
boat early - gotta get in as much sailing as possible before the lake dries
up.
We have a couple of brackets and a pin on the bow of the boat we use to
attach the anchor chain when the anchor's on the bow to keep the chain from
slapping. We just tied a line between this pin and the tack of the sail. Low
tech, but it seems strong enough and it works. I've been thinking about
rigging a block there so we can rig a downhaul and gain the ability to
release the tack for dousing from the cockpit. I'm open for suggestions for
a better way.
The sheets currently attach to the clew using some plastic snap shackles.
The problem is they're so thick, we can only get one through the clew,
leaving us to clip the other to the first. Unfortunately, when the lazy
sheet is the one attached to the clew, the other sheet tends to pull the
snap open - we dumped the clew a couple of times yesterday and decided we're
not going to use that method any more. We just ordered a couple of stainless
snap shackles that should alleviate this. They're due in on Tuesday, so
we'll be giving them a try on Wed. evening. We didn't tie the sheets to the
clew because the guy who showed us how to set the spinnaker uses snap
shackles on his - that's the way we learned it and by golly, that's the way
we're gonna do it.
The halyard block is on a bail attached to the masthead. It gets the halyard
a few inches forward of the furler, but I'm going to rethink that over the
winter. I'n not real comfortable with how close the halyard is ti the
furler - I get worried that we'll end up wrapping the halyard when we furl
the headsail and get both of them hung.
Mark Kaynor
09 Sep 2002
