BR20 Gaff yard

[plasticpaddy]

Hi
I've just had a delivery of new sails for Meg. A couple of things. When I got Meg her mail is sleeve mounted over the yard, she has 3 holes for the various halyard mountings.
The new sail looks like it needs to be laced and saw a post by Tim Leary talking bout lacing his main. The issue I have, apart from lacing is in the BR manual it shows the yard with a wooden block to stop the halyard slipp up the arm. My Yard doesn't have this block it looks like it was replace at sometime with a bullseye fairlead. I would like to mount the block back again (I have new one supplied by Swallow yachts. My question is does anyone know how this is mounted on to the yard, or suggest a good way to mount it. Does anyone still have this block, how is there secured to the yard arm.
Many thanks in advance for knowledgable forum

Sean

[Llafurio]

Sean,
you could come by and I show you. V93 N8F2.
The luff pocket of main and mizzen had been my idea for "Craic" and it had been real progress in terms of aerodynamics over the old Drascombe style lacing of the sail luff. And it had another big benefit: When towing the boat to far away regattas, and at high speed (through France you can legally tow at 75 mph) one better takes the mainsail off the yard and out of the wind. With the luff pocket, taking off and putting on the mainsail only takes two minutes, just slip it off or on the yard, while unlacing, relacing and tightening the lacing of the mainsail to the yard easily takes a quarter of an hour, each time.

Enigmatically SwB suddenly discontinued the luff pocket of the main and went back to lacing the mainsail in Drascombe style, from BR hull no. 30 or so onwards. A step back. I suspect they could not find a sailmaker who could do the main luff pocket properly, and they could not figure out how to tie the gaff yard to the halyard without twisting they yard or without the halyard chafing, so they "invented" this little wooden block as makeshift remedy. Would have been better, if they had taken the example of the Drascombes there, to simply provide a hole through the yard for the halyard.
You wont find that little block on many racing BRs. With a properly made hole through the yard it is not required, and rather a problem.
Claus

[Matthew P]

You wont find that little block on many racing BRs. With a properly made hole through the yard it is not required, and rather a problem.

I agree Claus.  It might surprise some people to read that I made a hole through Gladys's yard to secure the halyard.  The benefits are to secure the yard closer to the mast and avoid disconnecting the halyard from the yard when reefing - a bad time to accidentally let the halyard go and watch it disappear out of reach!  I secure the halyard to the reefing positions on the yard using soft shackles (thank you for this idea Graham).  These have never failed in use, although slightly fiddly to use. 

I've not previously advocated drilling holes in spars on this forum because it is imperative that the hole, as Claus says, "is properly made".  Simply drilling through the hollow spar at a point of maximum stress with a tube-collapsing halyard under tension, and unsealed from water could cause problems.  On Gladys I was careful to install a small supporting tube internally through the spar to counter the collapsing force and to seal it against water entering the spar.  I then reinforced the spar with carbon tape and epoxy wrapped 100mm around the outside of the yard or so on either side of the hole.

Incidentally, I also epoxied carbon tape to the leading edge (tension side) of the wind-surfer derived yard to stiffen it.  I justified the slight weight increase of carbon reinforcement by offsetting it against the weight reduction gained from using a smaller (6mm or 8mm) diameter and stiffer Dyneema halyard.

I think these mods, amongst others, made a material difference to Gladys's satisfying racing performance, including against Bermudan rigged versions. And I never obsessed unduly about mast rake, just eyeballed it to match the mizzen - more a cosmetic consideration than technical!

Claus also makes a good point about protecting the sail and spar when transporting the boat on a trailer.  Soon after buying Gladys I had a bespoke sail and mast bag made of mediumweight awning material that contains all the masts, spars and sails in one long bag.   The bag protects them from road dirt, UV and minimises the number of potentially damaging ropes and ties needed to hold them together.  And being gunter-rigged it is not necessary to dismount the mast from its tabernacle.         

Matthew
BR20 Gladys (sadly now for sale)

[Graham W]

It might surprise some people to read that I made a hole through Gladys's yard to secure the halyard.

Had it been breakfast time, I might have choked on my muesli.

[plasticpaddy]

Hi Claus
I would love to come up to the Kingdom to have a look. I feel I could pick up a lot of information from you. When is the best time to come up.

[Llafurio]

Sean,
I had thought you are yourself in Kerry.
If not, inter-county travel will become legal again from May 10th. Your visit would suit most days. You can phone or text me at 089 4411716.
C.