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Showing posts with the label rigging

Upgrade to control lines

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One big annoyance from my first few sails has been the combination on continuous lines and rail mounted cleats. The cleats are uncomfortable to sit on and much worse kept coming uncleared. The main cause of uncleating being over exuberant use of the continuous lines pulling on the backside of the far cleats. Once the cleats on the rail are undone you have to reach them to recleat, likely a problem as your weight goes to the wrong place. Looking at rigging pictures I found images of Daryl’s Farr on face book where the cleats were centerline and led through eyes at the rail. This seemed to fix all my primary issues so I decided to copy.  Original layout: Removed and holes filled. Also marked out an extra area for more non skid: At this point I commented on Daryl’s picture and he replied that he no longer ran lines through the eyes, but instead to low friction rings on elastic. As I thought about this made a lot of sense as it would allow more control from outboa...
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Next round of improvements

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Had another sail, this time with some wind. Still not on the wire though (I blame my weight, well, also the wind). Almost capsized a couple of times due to slips, or messing up with the long tiller extension. Came back with a few more projects. My hands were weak after three hours of sailing, and my legs bruised (find myself kneeling a lot in lighter air). [ Done ] Rework outhaul so it doesn't rub against the vang [ Done ] Raise the trapeze rings so I can crouch/wire in lighter air [ Done ] Improve travel on the vang, I two blocked it at one point [ Done ] Add ratcheting block to the mainsheet system Add non skid to a couple of sections Seriously consider foam pads in areas on the deck! In general though my first set of improvements (mainly the new smaller lines!) worked well. Some of this is already done. New lines to the left below, old to the right. MUCH cleaner now! The new sleeve on the boom worked well, though it may need some reinforcements ...
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Splicing overview, and D-Splicer FTW

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I've been splicing lines for years now from a first rough double braided eye slice years ago ( this video was my tutorial, dude is awesome!). Mainly these days I find myself working with stripped lines for lightness and just accept that I need to resplice every so often. The difference is the splice used - a brummel lock splice - takes less than ten minutes to complete - in the video linked it takes three and a half minutes but then you need to whip them to stop the tail working loose. Splicing is something I often do watching TV in the evening. Anyway, I digress! For Farrout I've been doing three types of splice: The brummel lock splice for line segments in the vang, downhaul, outhaul and also the mainsheet end. Locked brummel loops (see this hammock video ) to attach blocks Continuous Control line splices like in this video , so that my lines don't have ends. Over the years I've moved from my original aluminum fids to this stainless set by R...
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Beta testing

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Sail four coming up tomorrow but again looks likely a light air affair. Fingers crossed a little more puff than last weekend.... Did a few projects based on my first sailing. 1) Going to extend the rudder hinge to go through the tiller to speed up rig and de-rig. Because this will weaken it a bit in an already weak zone I'm first going to add a reinforcing sleeve. This project will go into the next week but at the end of it I'll be able to remove the rudder without taking the tiller off. I also decided to add a boom sleeve to stop the mainsheet snagging my neck. Couldn't see any off the shelf ones so ordered some sail material (both see through and dacron for edging) and double sided tape from SailRite. This made a pretty nice sleeve we'll see how long it lasts. Perhaps most importantly I reduced all the control lines from 1/4" to 5/32". These match the blocks and run a LOT better. Given that I also swapped back to low friction ring...
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