Jib control alternates....

Submitted by FS4161 on Thu, 07/06/2006 - 10:50
Has anyone else tried the first jib rigging as detailed here: http://home.att.net/~unofficial-flyingscot-page/jibcontrol.html If so how do you like it? My boat came rigged with the jib cleating on the seats. Which is fine when I'm sailing alone or with one other person but with 3 or 4 people in the boat the cleats on the seats are in the way and kind of annoying to deal with. I'd like to keep the sides clear for sitting (has internal spinaker trims) if possible. The setup above looks like it would be nice as it would keep the seats clear of hardware and mostly clear of the lines except at the very front. The downsides I see is it is probably not class legal and I might have to redo my Cunningham. I have a cleat on each side of the boat basically between the pair of cleats as shown on that page above but on the vertical part of the deck (forward coaming?). Cleat a line on one side, run it up to the sail and back down to the cleat on the other side is the Cunningham. The jib sheets with the above setup might get in the way of that. Any thoughts? Thanks, Shawn
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Comments

Shawn: A search of the FSSA handbook did not reveal any specifi

Submitted by MISailor on Fri, 07/07/2006 - 18:47.
Shawn: A search of the FSSA handbook did not reveal any specification or ruling that would suggest that the jib sheet system you are considering illegal. The cunningham system you describe, however, may be a different story because it sounds like it would be considered a double-ended system if you can adjust it from both cleats. The class rules prohibit double-ended rigging systems unless specifically permitted, and the only mention I found of a double ended system that is permitted is the spinnaker halyard. I don't mean to cause you any trouble but I thought you might like to know about the cunningham since you expressed interest in the class legality of the jib sheet system. Happy Sailing! Bill

Hi Bill, Good to know on the jib control.

Submitted by FS4161 on Sun, 07/09/2006 - 12:00.
Hi Bill, Good to know on the jib control. I may give that method a try as I do think it would give me more seating while cruising. Thanks for the information on the Cunningham. The previous owner of my boat obviously had it rigged for racing so I'm curious how he ran the Cunningham then? I'll have to check that out some more. Thanks, Shawn

I had someone else ask me about how this turned out.

Submitted by FS4161 on Sun, 11/19/2006 - 15:20.
I had someone else ask me about how this turned out... so.... I wanted to remove the seat cleat stuff because I wanted the extra seating for cruising. I regularly have 4 or more people on the boat and the seat cleats were a pain because of the loss of seating. I liked the rigging linked to earlier in this thread. I followed mostly the same thing but with a couple of small changes. In my case I didn't want to go to the stock setup. One of the things I liked about the seat cleating was it kept the sides free of lines for sitting on them and I didn't want the jib sheets sort of coming into the cockpit from the middle. At the same time I also went to 2:1 for the jib sheet for easier handling in heavier wind. I bought the jib rachet blocks and the wood mounting blocks (what a stock FS uses) from FS along with the 2:1 jib sheet kit and had them add an extra 5' of line to each jib sheet. I mounted the blocks on the foredeck with a SpinLock PowerCleat swivel cleats for easier cleating and releasing compared to a normal cleat from pretty much any seat in the boat. The jib sheets cross ahead of the boom vang bridle. This setup worked pretty well but the 2:1 bridle on the jib from Flying Scot tended to get twisted up after many tacks. It was built with 3 line braided line and it was sort of untwisting over a few hours of tacking and tangling up the two lines from the track mounted block. I built a new bridle using the same sort of miniblocks but they were swivel blocks instead to hopefully avoid the lines getting twisted and I used a different type of line to avoid the untwisting. I ran out of good weather to try the new bridle though to see if that fixed the problem. I also built the bridle a little different from the FS bridle so that I could just tie the bridle to the jib for quicker rigging. With the regular FS 2:1 bridle you pass a loop through the jib and then put the blocks through the loop. After that you run the jib sheets. By being able to tie the bridle to the jib you can leave the jib sheets rigged to save about 5 or 10 minutes of rigging time. As long as the new bridle deals with the twisting of the lines I will be extremely happy with this rigging. It clears up the seats, keeps the lines out of the way and the 2:1 makes it much easier to deal with the jib on heavy wind days. No problem single handing it either. As far as mounting the stuff on the deck I drilled oversized holes for every mounting point. Then used a bent nail chucked in a drill to remove the balsa core from the edges of the hole. I then put tape on the bottom of the holes, filled it with West System Epoxy to get the balsa core wet, drained them, mixed hard filling with the epoxy and refilled all the holes and gave it a day to harden. After they hardened I redrilled the holes in the proper size for the bolts through the epoxy. Then used 3M bedding stuff and stainless bolts/nuts/fender washers to mount all the hardware in place. Takes awhile to mount everything like this but it protects the balsa core from problems later on down the line. Shawn

You should really check out a system that Dave Neff in Maryland

Submitted by Tripp on Mon, 11/20/2006 - 10:18.
You should really check out a system that Dave Neff in Maryland is doing to boats these days. He runs the jib controls UNDER the seats. The sheet runs to the track (as they all do), through the block, then down through a hole he cuts in the crux of the seat. From there, a simple turning block and it exits through a hole cut in the front lip of the seat (like the spin sheets do when run under deck). Behind this hole, unseen is a cam cleat. Apologies for the complicated description, but the solutionn is VERY elegant and uncluttered. [8] FS4830

Thanks, it would be interesting to see pictures of that setup.

Submitted by FS4161 on Mon, 11/20/2006 - 12:09.
Thanks, it would be interesting to see pictures of that setup. Might be pretty slick. I have the internal spinnaker sheets in my boat so I know about what you mean. Haven't flown that yet though. If the sheet runs straight down from the track/block though does that get in the way of sitting there? That was about where the block was mounted for the seat jib controls I had and that was right in the way of the seating. Thanks, Shawn