More time on the water

Having spent 4 days sailing Sneaky around Chichester Harbour I was able to play with my new reefing arrangement, downhaul position and the boom retainer (not sure what else to call it but the rope that holds the boom loosely against the mast). I was mostly sailing with the kids but got some time on my own in winds that ranged from nothing to F4 or so.

The new reefing arrangement – This worked really well and it is much easier to get a reef in than it was before although I would still drop the sail to do it. The stainless carbine/snap hook for the tack (http://www.wichard.com/fiche-A%7CWICHARD%7C2315-0202040500000000-IM.html) made it really easy to attach the reef tacks alongside the standard tack. There is also a Wichard Delta hook that may be even easier to use but it wasn’t available in the shop local to me. The reefing lines at the back end of the boom also worked really well, pull on the rope and jam in the valley cleat – dead easy. The only downside was the rope dangling down because I was too lazy to coil it also I only added a single valley cleat for both reefing lines so I need to add another.

I changed the “boom retainer” to the arrangement suggested by another member on the Storer forum, the rope goes from the front of the boom, around the starboard side of the mast and then tied to the boom that is on the port side of the mast. I found this worked best with a thicker rope as thin stuff would bind, I ended up using the outer polyester layer of a 12mm braid on braid rope I had laying around. This allowed the sail to hoisted easily, and stopped my normal problem of the boom sliding forward and getting caught under the breasthook.

In combination with the new boom retainer I tried moving the downhaul aft and initially had it about 8” behind the mast, this worked ok but I found that it really added little to the sail shape but did cause the boom retainer to bind when sailing downwind. I ended up having the downhaul about 3” aft of the mast and that worked well.

This would probably mean more if I had pics but I forgot to take some. I’ll try to take some pics next time I rig it up, maybe this weekend coming if the strong winds blow though in time.

Lots of comments and interest from the folks I was sailing with (it was a Dinghy Cruising Association (Home - Dinghy Cruising Association) and UK Home Build Boat Rally (UK HBBR) event) about the GIS as they had never seen one in the flesh although one member of the group admitted having a GIS as the background image on her computer “because it is such a beautiful lug rig”. If that’s not praise for Mik’s hand then I don’t know what it. I also managed to collect a few scratches but it’s there to be used so I can live with that as we were having such a good time.