Small Boat Voyages

Enjoying exceptionally warm weather we decided to return to the Lake District for a couple of days.

I’m trying out a couple of rigging variations, one on the main sheet using a pair of tufnol main sheet fiddle blocks, one incorporating a horned cleat. I’m probably going to revert to the previous arrangement where the sheet dividers into two, making a double ended sheet since it was not a convenient angle to maintain a grip with one hand, and clearing out, which is not really advisable anyway, was not that easy to do with one hand on the tiller.

The other was a small copper lined aperture in the aft cloaming just large enough for the mizzen sheet to pass through to allow the mizzen to be controlled and cleated off from within the cockpit. Previously the sheet was cleated off on one of the cleats on the mizzen meat, but that was a little untidy since they were both in use, one for the halyard and the other four the toplift. Also by putting a stopper knot in the sheet there was the additional benefit of preventing accidental loss of the sheet overboard.

One other enhancement here is I replaced the reefing liners with coloured braided lines. Previously these were 6mm three strand but they attended to twist up and impede the reefing operation. The colour coding also simplifies things since the lines cross over and it was difficult to work out which lines needed assistance, slab reefing is never straight forward, especially if you need to shoot instructions to the crew.