Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Now about that rigging...

For those of you who read the last post and though "Get back to the boat already." this post should make you happy. For those of you who who could not care less about the rigging of a sail boat and only read this blog to hear about my jacked up craft projects, you can skip this one. It is by its very nature on the dry and technical side. We try to have something for everyone. ;)

Ceol Mor was either set up to look salty while tied permanently to the docks or she was rigged by a masochist. We've known for quite some time that we need to move just about all of the deck hardware to make it easier to handle the lines and sails. We got confirmation of this fact when we went sailing with Salty Gene who commented that while our boat is a solid, surprisingly nimble boat the hoisting and adjusting of the sails was "just too hard". This is what happens when people buy a boat and don't actually sail it- you get awkward block placement, undersized winches, etc. Fair play to the previous owners though. While the deck layout and rigging might not be conducive to actual sailing they did take immaculate care of the interior teak.

Since Mark and I do sail the boat and we've got a departure date to REALLY sail the boat, we've known for sometime that we would be redoing the entire deck layout. Since we've had so many other issues to address, we moved it down the list and planned to take a hard look at every piece of deck hardware one by one and figure out what's wrong and what we can do to make it right and most importantly- make it easier to sail. We like easy.

The first issue we are addressing is the pain in the butt job that is hauling in the main sheet. Ceol Mor is only a 42 foot boat, it shouldn't be this hard. As it turns out, the main sheet and vang lines are both routed through a double block at the front of the boom. The location of the double block causes the main sheet to draw across the vang fiddle when the lines are under tension. Fantastic. As if the undersized winches weren't providing enough of a work out, now we've got unwanted friction to make things just that much more difficult and to chew through our lines. Good for keeping rope suppliers in business, not so good for us our our wallet or our desire to make things easier.

The long term, permanent solution is to replace the boom vang with a rigid vang, install a new block for the main sheet on the pad eye currently being used for the boom vang fiddle. Then we will route the main sheet directly from this point to a block at the base of the mast and avoid the clash with the vang because the only clash we want on our boat is 'London Calling'.

What we are doing as a temporary fix is to replace the double block with two single blocks to ease the passage of the main sheet across the vang fiddle. We chose Schaefer M100-02 blocks for this. We chose them because they retail for $345 and Mark found them on clearance for $112.  That is one sweet deal. If there had been more than 2 in stock, we would have grabbed all of them. We know the sheets will still rub on the fiddle with this temporary fix, but hopefully much less so than before and the fact that the new blocks are much larger than the old ones should help us to more easily trim the sails into a shape that will make all of the brilliant sail trimmers weep at our lack of finesse.

The blocks attach with soft shackles which you can purchase for around $100 a piece or, if you have been hemorrhaging money like we have you can buy some Amsteel line and jolly well learn to splice it yourself. Mark did a good job for a first attempt, I need a bit more practice (okay a LOT of practice.). The finished shackles aren't perfect but fine for just now until our splicing skill gets a bit better. The blocks aren't going to live where they are just now anyway. I imagine those 2 blocks are going to be moved around quite a bit as we figure out all the ins and outs of the deck layout and what we can do to improve it.
Never mind the soft shackles, look at that beautifully varnished table.

7 comments:

  1. So is there a main traveler or just a sheet? Does it run all the way to the end of the boom or to a mid point?

    Also, to alleviate the rub, the vang fiddle should have its primary tension pull on a diagonal between the boom and the deck. That means in theory you could lower it some without really compromising it's function. Maybe give it a long soft shackle between the boom and the block so that the block itself is closer to the deck and the sheets only rub on other sheets?

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  2. Good points to consider Tate. We do have a traveler that is getting a complete make over as well. There is a 5 to 1 purchase arrangement at the end of the boom.

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  3. What about those of us who come to look at the cute baby and wish we were going to go live on a boat but really don't understand much of anything about the boat stuff besides for the fact that the pictures of it all look really neat? Can we just stick to looking at the pictures and hoping it all ends up working the way you want it to work?!? :-)

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    1. Absolutely Jill. These days it seems necessary to have a baby if you are going to have a boat. You are almost there...

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  4. OH! That's great news! I knew i was almost to BABY, but I didn't realize I was almost to baby AND boat! In fact I didn't really realize one precipitated the other! :-)

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  5. Check email Cidnie, your main sheet arrangement needs a look at.

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    1. Chuck, EVERYTHING needs a good, hard look at. The previous owners took wonderful care of the boat, but they did not sail her much which is why we have to start from scratch on the layout.

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