Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Bending the Sail

Junk rig, as per Blondie Hasler, is sometimes referred to as the Chinese lug rig. The sail is simplicity itself. Mine is cut flat and has six wooden battens in sleeves between seven panels to simplify reefing. The yard is angled upwards about seventy degrees from the uppermost horizontal batten and this upper triangular area is divided in two by the topmost batten. Because all the battens, except the top one, are parallel with one another, when the sail is reefed by dropping the halyard they naturally fall into place, since they are retained by lazy jacks.

The battens are held close the un-stayed flexible metal mast by means of parrels - in this case short lengths of rope. Sheet spans with blocks are attached to the panels at the leech for the mainsheet which passes through multiple blocks attached to the pushpit.

Today my task was to bend the sail to the wooden yard and boom, then slide the battens into their sleeves and secure them with short lengths of stout synthetic cord.

When the weather is fine I’ll have a go at rigging ‘Bumper’.

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