Why would you make your lazy jacks difficult? Brion Toss offers a better approach at Three Sheets Northwest:
There’s a Gary Larson cartoon with the caption “Inconvenience store,” in which all of a shop’s merchandise is crowded onto a tiny shelf, far above the heads of the customers.
Lazyjacks can be like that, a system whose entire purpose is to make your life easier, but which can make it so hard that you are actually better off without it.
Okay, that’s a bit extreme, since even a badly designed lazyjack system is — usually — better than nothing. But why settle for less than actual convenience? Why bring that shelf only a little ways down the wall, when a little more thought and planning can put it at eye level?
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I have lazyjacks that work well enough with my full batten sail. It’s rigged as shown in the picture and stows on the mast/boom by hooking over the reefing cringles. That all works well enough but is a little fiddley – unstow the line, unhook the lazyjacks from the cringles, adjust, snag the battens on the way up, stow the line, etc. On the way down reverse the process and use bungees to keep the lazyjacks from slapping on the mast.
I’ve found that instead all that I leave a lot of slack in the adjsument – enough that I can put my sail cover over the lazyjacks in place and have them dangle out of the bottom, all that’s required is to raise the sail and when it’s time to lower the main, simply tighten up the jack to catch the sail. Everything flakes nicely into the lazyjacks and all that’s needed to put on the sail cover is to loosen the control line.
* No need to uncoil to control line
* No fiddling unhooking the lazyjacks from the cringles
* No lines slapping against the mast
Easy Peasey!
Freedomrider II
Hunter 29.5
Alameda CA
reflake and sto