Mizzen sheeting and reefing
Hi Brian,
I have a simple sheet system for my mizzen. It is double ended. The sheet goes from a camcleat on the stb. gunwale, easily reached while sailing, back through a fairlead on the quarter and further back to end of the bumpkin, through a block and up through a block attached to the clew and the end of the sprit, back down through another block just forward of the other one on the bumpkin, and then forward on the port side as for the stb. side. You can handle each end of the sheet while sitting on the rail. This is the method Graham Byrnes uses on his ketch sharpie skiffs, Core Sound Sharpie and Bay River skiff. I first used Ronstan clamcleats but they didn't grip in light winds when there was minimal tension, so I changed to camcleats this year. You don't have a bumpkin and would put blocks on the quarters and the sheet would go straight up to the clew block.
I have thought for quite a while about how to reef a sprit boomed sail. Mine is 5.4 sq m so it's a bit much in a blow. It hangs out back a lot, so pulling out the sprit from the clew and moving it to a new clew at the reef grommet didn't appeal. The old ways didn't either, gathering the sail at the mast for instance. Graham Byrnes uses track on the masts when he wants a reefable spritboomed sail. Line around the mast gives you miles of line all over the place when the sail is down. Loops or hoops means you have to take off the sprit from the mast. You could do this with a simple clip tied onto the mast, to the block. I cut off the sleeve on my sail and glued on a track and sewed on slides. Then made a jiffy reefing system. The clew line starts by being tied onto the boom at a point which is the distance out from the mast that the new clew will be when reefed. I put a grommet here and the line goes through it, up and through the reefing grommet and down and back through a block at the end of the boom. Then it goes forward to a clamcleat on the boom near the mast (reachable). The luff reefing line starts on the mast above a grommet level with the start of the clew reef, goes down through it, up through the reef grommet and down past the original attachment on the mast to a cleat on the mast. So the line pulls the bottom of the luff up and the top of the luff down. The two luff grommets are close to each other when reefed. I'm not a mizzen expert, and have only just tried this in trailer-sailer mode. I'll be launching next week to give it a real try. I hope the pictures explain it better than my description.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
keyhavenpotter
I am new to mizzens and mizzen sheeting. RAID41 has a sprit boom which extends well past the stern of the boat.
My plan was to have a bridle at the transom with the mizzen sheet block tied at the centre. The mizzen sheet was to come from the mizzen clew, through this bridled block, forward to a small 16mm block at the rudder pivot and on to a cleat at the end of the tiller. So mizzen sheet always to hand.
On the wind, tacking above plan seems to work ok. What I have realised is the if I am on a run with the mizzen sheet fully out, and gybe to a run on the other tack, there is an amount of loose mizzen sheet swinging across the transom and will very easily catch the transom corner, or worse still the rudder cheeks.
Cannot take the mizzen sheet further forward on the sprit as I might do if she was lug mizzen because the sail is lower than the boom on starboard tack, port tack would be ok!
Can the Beth sailors or mizzen experts help please?
Thanks, Brian