If a boat has a rotating mast, then is it true that the cleats for the halyard, downhaul and reefing lines need to be cleated off on the mast (or some appendage to it that rotates with the mast).
If these lines were cleated on the deck then they would alternately lower, loosen, or tighten the sail, or resist the rotation of the boom.
I'm not sure I'm as sold as I once thought on a rotating mast.
Hi Esteban
ReplyDeletethe bad news is yes, but the good news is that it's not all bad. Racing dinghies with freestanding masts have to deals with exactly this situation, but in reality they are trimming everything on most points of sail. I have got a few images of such setups but other than posting them on the K Designs forum I dont know how to show them to you easily. I went through all this , of course. You could in fact mount all that stuff on the masts, if carefully thought out , and maybe have just one slightly loose deck attachment to save the masts should you become (heaven help us) inverted- but even then if your mainsheets are attached and your masts are sealed you wouldnt lose them in such an event.
In my particular case I got round most of these issues with: downhaul mounted on the top of the deck bearing, boomless rig so no vang etc, no halyard with mast furling sails. You could still do such a set up on your boat- it would be just a scales up version of my set up. I rig up a simple barber hauler arrangement onto the windward sail on a reach so I can shape the windward sail across to the lee side, forming a sort of wing with the lee sail- huge improvement in performance on a reach , and so kills the argument about the ineficiency of a boomless set up.
regards
Bryan
Hi Bryan,
ReplyDeleteI think if you click on my profile you can send me an e-mail from there. Also I looked on your blog and paused the video when it shows the downhaul you are talking about. It looks like you can reach the mast from the cockpit? That is partly what is getting me worried. If you look at the 660 renderings it does not look like it would be so easy to get to the mast. I'm trying to think through this clearly but I suspect this has implications for the kind of rig I choose. When I get my my thoughts together I will put down in a post. Believe it or not I try to avoid rambling posts.
-Esteban