The first twilight race of the year is a special time. After thinking about sailing and racing all winter long, we finally get to go ­evening racing again. My wife, Libby, has a J/70 that she races on Lake Washington, and sometimes I get to tag along. Our first Wednesday-night outing was the start of her season, and excitement was high.

However, when we arrive at the boat and start rigging, we discover a major issue: There is no tail to the jib halyard. The thin rope used to hoist the jib is lost inside the mast and nowhere to be seen. There is only one approach to fixing this problem: We’ll have to pull out the halyard from the top of the rig, rerun it down inside the mast, and then fish it out through the narrow halyard exit slot in the mast wall. Fortunately, we have more than an hour until the start, so we are confident that we can make it happen and not miss a thing. We’re darn well going to try anyway, because we really don’t want to miss the season opener. 

One of Libby’s crew is 20-year-old Esther Goodell. She is smart, capable, eager and fearless. As I am preparing to get hoisted aloft on a fender repurposed as a bosun’s chair, Goodell volunteers to go up instead. Let’s see…her 110 pounds or my 180 pounds?

Yeah, sending Goodell up is a much better idea. So, we haul her to the hounds carrying a weighted string to feed into the mast. After a couple of attempts and some fiddling with it, she finally gets the string to drop all the way down. Then comes too many unsuccessful attempts to fish the string out of the slot, until Libby finally snags it with a hook and pulls it out. Success! We are definitely making the start.

Not so fast, cowboy. As we try to pull the halyard through, the messenger becomes disconnected, and we are back to where we started. We have to go through the whole process again, but soon enough, we have a working halyard, and finally we can lower Goodell to the deck.

Sails go up, and we’re off the dock with 20 minutes to spare. Spirits are high until we go for our practice spinnaker set. The halyard skies to the top of the mast, and the spinnaker falls into the water. In our haste to get going, we had tied a poor knot, and now our kite halyard is at the top of the mast.

After a brief discussion of our options, we head back to the dock to try to tip over the boat and recover the halyard. I have seen this done with other J/70s, but I’ve never done it myself. Turns out, it’s an exciting exercise but perfectly doable. We start pulling the boat over onto its side using the main halyard and pulling on the shrouds. It takes the full weight of the crew pulling like crazy until we get it far enough over to grab the runaway halyard.

With the mainsail back up, we’re in business and hustling to get out to the racecourse. But by now we’ve missed the first race of the night. Bummer, but we were good to go for the second and final race. We sail well and get a fifth place in the 27-boat fleet. 

While our DNC and fifth-place scores might not seem that great, for Libby’s team, it’s a positive night. We’ve worked together to overcome multiple challenges. It would have been easy to give up and say it was all too difficult, but we’ve persevered, kept a positive attitude, and problem-solved our way to making a fun second race. It’s amazing how adversity makes us stronger and brings a team closer together. The lessons for us are obvious: Think through solutions as a team, don’t give up, and take your time when tying halyard knots.

A Skied Halyard Recovery Kit 

If you’ve never accidentally sent a halyard to the top of the rig, congratulations. It’ll happen eventually. Getting back into action requires the right tools at the ready. A few essentials in an onboard tool kit, or in the dock box, are all you need. Also, to make the job easier, have a reeving splice in the tail end of every halyard.

• Length of small-diameter Dyneema that’s
  at least twice the mast height
• 6- to 12-inch section of bike chain
• Sewing kit with whipping twine
• Electrical tape
• Seizing wire to make a hook
• Bright, narrow-beam flashlight

The post Recovering Skied Halyards: Lessons From the Racecourse appeared first on Sailing World.

If you’re looking for professional rigger Carl Merrill, poke your head into one of his several 40-foot metal shipping containers bearing the distinctive cross-stich logo of his company, Kingspoke. If Merrill or any of his fellow riggers aren’t at their workbenches fiddling with a high-tech splice or mocking up a complicated purchase system, check the local shipyards of Rhode Island’s Aquidneck Island. Chances are, wherever there’s a grand-prix machine on the dock or on the hard, you’ll likely find it getting the Kingspoke royal treatment.

In the context of US grand-prix yacht racing, the island—and Newport, in particular—is the Tigris-Euphrates valley. The city hosted the America’s Cup for 53 years and, on any given weeknight on Narragansett Bay, you might see classic 12-Metres engaged in a tacking duel under the iconic Pell Bridge, a group of TP52s training with coach boats nipping at their transoms, or two dozen Shields chasing each other around the cans, with Moths or wing-foilers darting about throughout the action. The island is also home to high-tech composite boatbuilders, speed shops, sail lofts and, of course, some of the best technical rigging shops in the US. It should therefore come as no surprise that when Merrill discretely hung Kingspoke’s shingle out in 2017 there was little to zero fanfare. That’s how Merrill rolls. 

A native of Lubec, Maine, the state’s easternmost town (and home to Quoddy Head, the easternmost point in the contiguous United States), Merrill started doing “a bit” of sailing at around age 10. When his family moved to Wakefield, Rhode Island, a few years later, he began racing, and continued at the University of Rhode Island, where he studied ocean engineering. His chosen field of study seemed to scratch an itch.

“I liked doing the engineering problem-solving, you know, putting stuff together,” he says. “That’s what drew me to ocean engineering—we got to make an autonomous submarine sophomore year, although there wasn’t a whole lot of hands-on work after that.”

He quickly realized that post-collegiate careers in his field were of the office type, and he “wasn’t super keen on that.”

With Rhode Island being the land of opportunity for aspiring pro sailors, Merrill promptly found his gigs, running various big-boat programs, including Glenn Darden’s Swan 42 and J/70, both called Hoss. His daily exposure to the fiddly problem-solving nature of high-tech race-boat rigging proved an excellent match for his engineer’s brain, which then led to him joining the grand-prix specialists at the established Gorilla Rigging, where he spent six years as shop manager.

Gorilla’s techie approach to many of the tip-of-the-spear yacht-rigging challenges was right up Merrill’s alley. After a successful stint here, Merrill sought a change of pace and committed to more program-focused freelance rigging, both textile and through bespoke hardware and systems—the work they produced at Gorilla during his tenure has its fingerprints all over Kingspoke today. His customer-facing approach ensured a steady stream of repeat and word-of-mouth new business, and the travel lifestyle suited his wanderlust. Before too long, however, he and his wife, Kristen, welcomed their first child, and his thoughts turned to settling down and starting his own shop. A bold move in a crowded specialist scene.

He pared his core business to a few key clients: the Volvo 70 Wizard, the IRC52 Spookie, and Darden’s Hoss stable. The work was plenty to keep him busy, but by design not enough to dilute the service he brought to each program. He was building Kingspoke’s reputation from a small workshop until he got lured away one last time, signing on with the US SailGP’s shore team. If Merrill needed a reminder to stay at home and mind the shop, it arrived just after the false start to SailGP Season 2, which kicked off in Sydney, Australia, and was then quickly postponed when COVID-19 shut down the world.

The version of Kingspoke we see today took shape during this period as the shop became known as a reliable local source for its textile rigging, but also for its penchant for solving challenges using custom hardware. Merrill credits Spookie owner Steve Benjamin with providing him a platform for pushing boundaries as well as encouraging him to think outside the box.

“What was nice about the Spookie was that Benj was always into anything kind of crazy or radical, and from that standpoint was always super supportive, so we were able to experiment with a lot of stuff,” Merrill says. 

An example that emerged from the Spookie laboratory is Kingspoke’s proprietary RLR Carbon Reeler.

“When we took delivery of the 52, none of the control lines had reelers,” Merrill says. “I thought, I can come up with something for that.”

The solution is an underdeck take-up reel that organizes control line and halyard tails below deck. The innovative bit is the use of a clutch mechanism that works in a similar fashion to a spring-loaded window shade—when you give a line a tug, it engages the take-up clutch and the spool spins, retracting the loose tail. Being carbon, they weigh next to nothing, and the mechanism is self-powered. The net effect is one less crew off the rail when you come around the leeward mark on two wheels—a compelling metric. The RLR has become ubiquitous on various 52 circuits, as well as on other larger grand-prix yachts.  

More importantly, the RLR has served to burnish Kingspoke’s reputation as a solutions provider, whether that solution is textile, carbon and epoxy components or machined hardware. One obvious trait of the rigging shop’s handiwork, regardless of the medium, is the elegant simplicity. Take, for example, a continuous control system with shock cord take-up, or a titanium PAC52 headstay strop through-deck fitting. Merrill’s instinct is to approach problems from the perspective of an engineer, and this results in systems and original designs that seem clever, innovative, and deceptively simple.

It’s a difficult concept to put into words, but consider the company’s logo, three crossed stitches—about as simple as you can get—but it’s a logo that can be whipped into the tail of sheets, halyards, and control lines. Having struggled firsthand with the simultaneous importance and difficulty of marking rope for traceability in the field (and having experimented with labels and clear heat-shrink, RFID chips and readers, and various other complex methods), the three quick whipstitches are, to my eye, well, elegantly simple.

I’ve heard it said that the best engineers are inherently lazy, which is not literally true, of course, but it speaks to the idea of thinking enough about a problem to solve it but not overthinking it and burdening the solution with unnecessary elements or complexity. This seems to be an unspoken ethos of Kingspoke, and it comes across in their work, their branding and their slick social media feed, which relies heavily on the photography of marketing and sales manager Sammy Hodges.

“The social media component is certainly something that we’re widely known for within the sailing community, and we’ve definitely made a conscious decision to present the work in a professional way and to try to educate; it’s kind of the same reason people come to us for these custom hardware jobs,” Merrill says. “We have the opportunity to literally show the end user what goes into the process of choosing specific materials, sizes, color coding…all the details they might not consider until they see it visually.”

Aside from its social feed, Kingspoke’s marketing efforts are minimal, focusing instead on supporting top sailors, including Riley Gibbs, Bora Gulari and Anthony Kotoun. Word-of-mouth brings new business to the shop, but Merrill and his team are conscious of not getting over their skis or sacrificing service.

“Developing strong ties with our customers and their rigging projects lead to long lasting relationships,” Merrill says. “Customer retention for us comes down to service first, and also the willingness to take on random hardware passion projects, and to just being a trusted resource.”

Today, Merrill and his staff of around five work their magic from a warren of shipping containers, a setup that seems to suit their style, which eschews grandiose plans for industry domination in favor of thoughtful growth.

“It allows us to do what we want, when we want, and react to opportunities as they arise,” Merrill says. “I always liked the modularity of the containers from an architectural standpoint, and we enjoy building them out on our own.”

Such flexibility is freedom as well. Instead of moving into a giant space and hoping that “if we build it, they will come,” Merrill’s approach is more along the lines of “if they come, we’ll add a container.”

“We focus on having our book of customers and keeping them happy,” he says. “Growth comes from being able to expand what we offer them, whether it’s load cells or soft shackles, or by distributing blocks or furlers. When we can offer more products and become more of a one-stop shop, we grow organically. That’s the goal.”

The post Meet The Riggers Crafting Magic appeared first on Sailing World.

To compound the confusion, there are two separate Laser entities — LaserPerformance and Laser Performance Australia — each experimenting with three different new rigs. In case you’re counting, that’s nine rigs total, including the three original rigs (Full, Radial and 4.7).

To try to get a handle on what’s going on in Laserdom, and perhaps dispel some uncertainty and achieve clarity, we spoke with Bill Crane, Chairman of the LaserPerformance Group, which is experimenting with three “ARC” rigs. We also spoke with Tracy Usher, President of the International Laser Class Association, who was able to provide information about the class’s possible direction and the Julian Bethwaite-designed Australian proposals — the C5, C7 and C9 rigs.

In January 2019, several videos went viral showing some of the new rigs, most notably the “C5” which, like the other two C-series rigs, and the three-rig ARC series, features carbon spars and a newly designed, plastic sail that looks much different than anything that has ever appeared on a Laser. The ILCA then issued a press release attempting to quash some of the more negative responses the proposals stimulated. They were adamant the rig development had no intentions of bettering their chances at the Olympic selection trials currently underway in Valencia, Spain.

“It’s kind of unfortunate timing,” says Usher, “that suddenly everything hit the airwaves right as we’re going through sea trials because the impression out there is that these are to replace the current rigs, or are being done for the Olympics. It really has nothing to do with that at all.”

Says Crane, “The timing wasn’t planned. To be honest — I did put in an Olympic tender for the ARC rig last June, despite having been advised by World Sailing that our tender would not be accepted. But the idea was that if the Laser were chosen as the Olympic equipment, we would then be in line to be an evolutionary product, if World Sailing and the class thought it was time to move forward. If you don’t put that in, chances are you won’t have that opportunity.”

Crane says the idea of moving the Laser up the evolutionary ladder originated at least four years ago at an ILCA technical committee meeting. “We had talked about the need to move the Laser along, but we hadn’t been getting a lot of traction with the class, other than the Mark II full-rig sail and carbon top-section.”

While those were significant advances for a class with a reputation of evolving at a glacial pace, they were still a drop in the bucket compared to what their competition in the singlehanded boat market was doing. “It’s pretty hard to watch the RS Aero come out and the Melges 14, and the Devoti D-Zero, which is in Europe,” says Crane. “These are much more contemporary designs. The Laser class has always wanted slow and methodical change when it affects performance, which I fully understand. But at some point, we have to take it up a notch.”

The Laser has numbers on its side, with more than 215,000 built, and, according to Crane, probably 100,000 of them still sailing. They’re found in every continent except Antarctica. However, Henry Ford could have made the same argument for the Model T, and many of us might still be driving them only because they were ubiquitous. But we’ve moved on, which Usher acknowledges. “Name a class that is still going strong, is 50 or 100 years old, and looks like it did when it first started out,” he says. “You have to keep looking forward and keep yourself relevant.” That’s what the class is trying to do.”

Crane credits the Laser’s designer, Bruce Kirby, for “an awesome job designing the boat.” But they’re still building them the way they were in 1971. “The world has moved on,” he says. “The hull, that will be trickier, but the rig, we can do.”

At the November 2018 Laser World Council meeting, Bethwaite’s testing program was given the green light. The main focus was the 4.7. “In Europe, the 4.7 has had tremendous success,” says Usher. “Then, kids move into Radials or full rigs, depending on their size. But the same kind of thing’s not happening in the rest of the world. There is a whole category of lightweight adult sailors, and the 4.7 or Radial are not right for them. I should add that the Japanese builder, for as long as I can remember, has been championing some way to make a rig that was for lighter-weight sailors. The question for Bethwaite was, can you design something that will slot between the 4.7 and Radial, and appeal to sailors we’re not capturing now.”

RELATED: The Zen of Rigging a Sailboat

Meanwhile, LaserPerformance decided to take on the other sails, says Crane, to provide sailors with an option. “We were not aware the Australians had done the other two rigs. I thought they were just working on the small rig, and suddenly the video came out showing their three rigs, which was a bit of a surprise. Then, we decided we’d show them what we were doing. We hadn’t brought it to the class at that point because we didn’t want to disturb things, right when they’re looking at picking a new boat for the Olympics.”

Crane’s plan includes contemporary Full and Radial rigs. “We broadened the weight range so that heavier and lighter men and women could be competitive,” he says. “We came up with a rig that was rather stiff down low, but much more flexible up high. The sail has much more high-aspect ratio, which means you can really twist the top off when it’s windy. We’ve tested it, and it really works.”

Crane emphasizes they’re not going to get rid of the Radial or Full rig, but as Usher noted, they “need to start moving the Laser forward, and the rate of evolution has to increase.”

A big challenge for the Laser class is that the boat is being sailed much differently than Kirby could ever have envisioned, and modifications to the original sail controls have created unintended consequences, especially for those racing at the highest levels of competition. “It was fine when Hans Fogh’s 3.2-ounce Dacron sail came out and there was just a 3-to-1 vang and 3-to-1 cunningham,” says Crane. “But then people started tying loops in those controls, creating a lot more purchase, and sail life rapidly diminished.”

To address that, the class switched to sails made of 3.8-ounce Dacron. “All of a sudden, the top sections started to bend, and everyone was blaming the manufacturer,” says Crane. “We upped the spar alloys as high as we could without driving the price out of the realm of reality.”

Then came a vang and cunningham system that allowed significant amounts of tension to be applied with considerably less effort, and the 3.8-ounce Dacron sail suffered the fate of its predecessor. The response? The 4.5-ounce Mark II sail, which checked the box for sail durability, but did no favors when it came to the top section. The stronger sail, coupled with heavy cunningham load, dramatically increased pressure on the rivets holding the top-section mast collar, and the rivets began to fail. Plus, top sections continued to break.

The solution was a carbon top section with a molded collar to address the rivet issue, and the carbon construction provided a tube much less prone to breakage.

“Now, we’re starting to see some of the lower masts starting to bend, not so much in the full rigs, but on the Radial,” says Crane. And so, we’re in the process of doing a composite lower for the Radial.”

Given the domino-effect created by attempting to stay modern, it’s not surprising that the class wants to hit the reset button. But there’s more to it. “The goal is to possibly introduce a new rig to appeal to a new group of people,” says Usher.

“There will be some crossover, I’m sure. Maybe eventually, everybody will say, ‘Wow, these things are a lot cooler, and that’s what we want to do.’ But we’re not going to force that on people.”

Crane agrees. “I think it’s one of those things where, if you can get it launched and people buy it, the younger people who are going to get in the Radial might think it’s cooler.”

Usher does not anticipate much incentive to switch from one rig to another, “Unless you’re a sailor coming up and you buy into one or the other, and you stay on that path. And if you buy the rig with the boat, I think the price will be close. But the key is it does actually make the boat sail better.”

With testing ongoing in Australia and Japan, Usher says that the World Council meeting in November 2019 will determine the next steps — if any. “Remember, the Laser class is notoriously slow at making changes,” says Usher. “If I were out there sailing a Laser, I wouldn’t hold my breath for a new rig to show up.”

The post Rethinking the Laser Rig appeared first on Sailing World.

Like everyone else in my local Laser Frostbite Fleet 413, for a few hours every Sunday during the miserably frigid Newport, Rhode Island, winter I escape the house and savor a few hours of me time. Ideally, I’ll follow the same routine every time: out of the house by 11 a.m., cruise control with the local blues station playing on the radio, pit stop at the coffee shop. I’m parked at Sail Newport by 11:45. I’ll loiter for a bit, see who’s around, but the cover comes off at noon sharp for the immersive, soulful ­experience we call rigging the boat.

Step 1: Open the stern plug and pray there’s no trickle. When it’s subzero, whatever is in there is frozen anyway, so why do I bother to check? Routine.

Next, I’ll empty the contents from the big side pocket of my blade bag and lay it all out in the cockpit: a black-and-red-flecked mainsheet, the tangled mess of a vang system, the yellow outhaul line and its assorted blocks, the clew tie-down strap and three white sail battens, one short, two long.

When I think about it, the funny thing about this procedure is the slow, methodical pace at which it happens. I could be quicker about it, which will give me more time to sail the course and check the wind before the first race. But, no, this is the time to slow down and shape my mental state. Preparation is half the game, so don’t rush it. Plus, fleet guru Ed Adams once told me never to go out too early. Doing so will suck the warmth right out of you. And Ed’s always right.

Returning to my tortoise-pace routine, I unflake the sail and slide it over the spars that I’ve coupled together, checking all of its rivets for hints of corrosion. I gently lay the sail across the deck and insert the battens one by one, always starting at the top, and check that the red-yarn leech telltales are still attached.

Then, in one swift motion, I hoist the ­cumbersome aluminum spar with a push forward of my right hand and a thrust downward with my left — Iwo Jima-like — and wobblingly target the dark hole known as the mast step. It goes in and slides down with a clunk as it hits bottom. Water squirts up at me through the space around the spar. I jump back before I get wet — that’s called muscle memory. I know it was coming.

I blow hot breaths on my gloveless hands. Metal bites when it’s frozen.

With the sail now flogging in the wind, I hasten my pace so as to connect the boom and stop the sail from flapping and destroying itself. I slide the gooseneck pin into the hole on the boom, hook the outhaul and then yank on its purchase to tighten the foot snug up against the aluminum tube. I pass the line through the micro turning block tied to the mast, and down to its cleat. Clew strap goes on next, nice and tight so the leech is firm.

At this point, I can resume my slow, methodical setup. I extract an annoying split ring from the vang pin and then attach the metal hardware to the mast tang. One of these days I’ll get a quick-pin so I don’t have to fumble with jamming a fingernail between two tiny metal coils. Or maybe not. It’s just part of the routine.

I will have electrical-tape marks (red, yellow, orange) on the mast, so the ­cunningham-purchase block that hangs through the sail grommet has to be tied on exactly at the same point every time. This, of course, requires a precision bowline, which I achieve by deliberately weaving the rope through itself with my chubby, frozen digits. I feed the cunningham line through the deck cleat, and I pause to stand, stretch my lower back, and take a look around.

What’s happening out there with the breeze in the cove?

I’ll scan the dry-sail lot, which is littered with Lasers, some upside down, some askew on their dollies and some buried to the dolly wheels in snow. A few sailors lumber in and keep to themselves. They have their own routine, their own pace. Others are more social, standing and chatting with a rolled sail slung over their shoulder. Dogs are running free. Moose, the race-­committee guy, is tossing big orange balls from a RIB. He definitely has his routine.

The flow is good.

Back to my rigging. Time to weave the control tails. I’m sure there’s a better way to deal with the outhaul and cunningham, but a part of the rigging process I find strangely satisfying is daisy-chaining my rope until I have enough line to make a bowline that will fit the width of my wetsuit-gloved hand. As I weave, I find myself slipping into random deep thoughts about work, home life or whatever. It’s as if the web of rope I’m creating is pulling me into its fold, and here I clear my mind so it’s fresh for the races. When finished, I step back and stretch my back again. The boat looks sharp. Shipshape.

The final rope to run is the mainsheet, always through the ratchet block first to ensure the “click” and then up through the boom blocks, down to the traveler and back up to a nice, tidy figure eight. The white mark is set to the mainsheet block and the bitter end tied off with a figure eight.

What’s left to do is gently extract and lay the centerboard in the cockpit after wiping it down with a rag, stretching its bungee keeper cord to the bow chock and connecting the tiny Brummel clips. The final step is the rudder: I thread it under the Spectra traveler, line up the pintles to the gudgeons and slide it down until I hear the signature ping of the metal tang locking the rudder head in place. The rig is complete only after double-checking that the stern plug is firm. That one step only recently made its way into my routine.

I take one last scan across the harbor to assess the conditions and determine the day’s dress code. Getting dressed is a whole different experience, one that is not nearly as mindful as preparing the boat. All of sudden, I feel rushed. I’m anxious to push off the beach, get on the water and immerse myself in this most wonderful Sunday-afternoon routine.

The post The Zen of Rigging a Sailboat appeared first on Sailing World.

You may have at one point asked yourself: I’ve rarely ever used by boomvang, do I really need it? The obvious answer is yes, but do you really know more than just the short answer as to why?

Absolutely! The boom vang can be a misunderstood sail control. It takes over the job of pulling down on the boom once the mainsheet is eased. Upwind, the mainsheet pulls down as soon as the boom is over the traveler. Controlling the boom height determines twist, or the shape of the mainsail leech.

If you don’t use the boom vang in all but the lightest conditions, the boom will rise up as it is eased out and the sail will twist off, spilling power out of the top of the sail. This is okay when you have too much heel and helm, but not when you need power. Not taking advantage of your boom vang also limits how far out you can ease the sail. If the top is twisted off, it will run up against the upper shrouds and wrap itself around the stay, which prevents you from letting out the sail as far as you would like. The golden rule of thumb: Use enough vang to keep the top batten parallel to the boom. If it is too tight, the top telltale will stall.

There are a few exceptions however when it comes to boom vang use. The first has to do with multihull boats, which have a traveler that runs the entire width of the boat. With this type of boat, letting the traveler down allows the mainsheet to continue to do the job of pulling down and controlling twist. The length of the traveler lets the boom go a long way out before it starts to lift. Also, most multihulls have upper shrouds that are quite far aft, which prevents easing the mainsheet very far. A vang still helps, however, as it allows maximum ease on the boom before the shrouds become an issue.

The other exception has to do with high-performance planing boats that use asymmetrical spinnakers (Melges 24s, 32s, and C&C 30s, etc). To promote planing and to match the leech of the asymmetrical spinnaker when reaching high angles, a huge amount of twist is required. With this type of boat, you have to ease the vang (until it is almost off) to induce twist, then overshoot and pump the mainsail to promote planing.

If you’d like to know a bit more about mainsail twist (another sailor had a question about it, too), read more here.

This tip was brought to you by Quantum Sails.

The post Finer Points: The Boom Vang appeared first on Sailing World.

Professional riggers are consummate tinkerers: Put a length of rope in their hands, and they’ll immediately start thinking of ways to splice it, strip it, taper it, and ultimately avoid using any sort of knot, which we all know can compromise a rope’s breaking strength. The rigger‘s obsession doesn’t end with an excessively milked splice, however. When it comes to utilizing cordage in all sorts of inventive ways, the good ideas never seem to stop coming. I’ll share some the best new ideas from the industry, as well as a few easy upgrades to consider before your next racing season.

1. Replace your wire lifelines.
Wire lifelines are history (unless your one-design class rules state otherwise). Dyneema is the best option, especially Dyneema SK90, which is up to three times stronger than similar sized 1×19 stainless steel wire. You are also able to eliminate all the associated hardware, including toggles, eyes, and turnbuckles. With Dyneema, you simply luggage-tag the forward eye splice onto your pulpit, run the lifelines through your stanchions, put a friction ring into the aft eye, and lash it to the stern pulpit. It is suggested that you have a Dyneema cover spliced into the portions that pass through the stanchions. Dyneema is UV stable and chemically inert, but the best part about this option is that it is much less expensive than a comparable wire lifeline assembly.

2. See your sheets or halyards in the dark.
You can now have custom lines made with glow-in-the-dark markers wound into the cover. Some manufacturers, such as Marlow, now offer this for full lengths, or certain spans of your specified lines. Use it for all your halyards and sheets, or select a few control lines that you need to quickly identify at night.

3. Blend hoist marks into your halyard covers.
As with the glow-in-the-dark markers, these marks can be woven into the cover at a pre-determined location in the rope. Gone are the days of permanent markers, whippings, or tape. These markers are specific to your line and are not going anywhere.

4. A new way to attach your jib sheets.
T-Ring systems are a great option available to sailmakers and riggers. A fitting, which looks like a clew ring with a “T” facing into the sail, is sewn into the clew of your jib. Your sheets simply have an eye spliced into the end of each. To attach the sheet to the sail, the Dyneema loop goes over the T, through the two sheets’ eyes, and then over the T the other way. Most sailmakers offer a flap with Velcro closure that goes over the fitting to secure the attachment. This setup eliminates hardware banging around on the shrouds, mast, and crew. It also prevents knots from getting hung up during tacks, and because there are no knots to tie, trim marks are consistent.

5. Attach your halyards without using hard shackles.
A soft shackle is simply Dyneema with a sliding eye splice and a knot at the other end. The best application is as a halyard shackle. They can be made to any desired length and working strength, and their weight is negligible. One of the best ways to use them is to have an eye in the end your halyard, and stitch the soft shackle into the eye. The shackles can have a “leash” or opener, and a safety Velcro if preferred. If they’re closed properly, they tighten down on themselves when loaded, and will not open.

6. Attach blocks and fittings with soft loops.
Dyneema loops, whether single pass or covered multiple-pass loops, have been around for many years. Over the past few years, however, manufacturers have made a concerted effort to design their products to use this technology for attaching their products. Both Ronstan’s Orbit blocks and Harken’s T2 blocks use a small single-pass loop in low-load applications. Harken’s Black Magic and TTR blocks along with Karver’s K blocks use multi-pass covered loops for higher-load applications.

7. Use friction rings as alternatives to blocks.
Other fairleads can even be used where a sheave is not needed. Friction rings are tailor-made for your cascade turning points. These are round, ferruled “thimbles” that can be used for redirects, or even turning surfaces, especially those that lead to a winch or purchase system later and do not need the mechanical advantage of a sheave. They are lightweight and extremely strong. Plus they require little to no maintenance because there are no moving parts, and therefore last a very long time. Some uses include: lashing ends, cascades and purchase systems, inhaulers, redirect leads, and sprit-tack line turning fittings.

8. Maximize your winch power with the right cover material.
Using the right cover material, regardless of the core material you choose in your high-tech lines is key to getting maximum grip from your winch drum. The cover is where the rubber meets the road—where your line hits the winch.

There are multiple options available outside of the old standby polyester cover. But the more popular common-use covers include a variety of blends. Polyester/Technora is a blend that adds great grip to your winch. On smaller boats, users have found it great to hold onto in applications such as mainsheet purchase systems or spinnaker sheets that do not use winches. Vectran/Polyester blends add more slip to the sheet without making sacrifices on major wear characteristics. This allows lines to be eased around the drum without the line jumping and bumping as it is eased off the winch. Vectran/Technora is a pricier blend, but one that is built for wear and tear. Originally developed for larger boats that were eating through sheets and other lines, this comes in smaller sizes, so as to be available to a wider range of boats.

9. Increase power to a purchase system with a cascade.
Cascades are 2-to-1 strops that are built into purchase systems to increase the overall mechanical advantage. You’ll see them applied to boom vangs, jib leads, and backstay controls. Cascades double the purchase of the system “inside” the system. For example, if you have a 3-to-1 purchase in your cunningham and would like more power, adding a 2-to-1 cascade to the system is a smaller, simpler, and less expensive alternative to buying all the hardware and rope to build a new 6-to-1 system. Still need more power? Add another cascade on top of the first to double it yet again.

10. Lock your jib halyard and adjust tension on the fly.
A halyard-lock with cunningham is a powerful tool. Halyard locks have many advantages: Mast compression is eliminated, and tuning becomes more repeatable. However, another advantage is the ability to adjust luff tension easily while sailing upwind. When a jib halyard is set onto a lock, the head is at a fixed height. You can have a floating tack, which allows the tack height to be controlled with a cunningham system that can be a cascade and purchase system to a cleat, or a cascade to a winch. Either way, you have gained mechanical advantage over simply having a hard tack point and halyard.

Small adjustments while the sails are loaded become simple. And when you reach the leeward mark, you can just hoist the jib halyard into the lock without worrying about getting the precise halyard tension. Once past the fray at the mark, you can take up on cunningham and set your desired tension.

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Laura Weyler’s first Quantum Key West Race Week was more than she and J/88 team Hijinks could have hoped for; we didn’t just make it down there and race without any major hiccups, we won Lewmar Boat of the Day and the whole J/88 class. It was a lot of work and a lot of fun. Here’s how we did it.

The Date

Last fall, Hijinks owner Laura Weyler decided to add the 2017 Quantum Key West Race Week to her J/88 campaign. Having done Key West several times, I knew the effort required just to get to the starting line in Key West, not to mention succeeding. At Quantum Sails Rochester, we not only handle new sails, canvas, sail repairs, rigging, and hardware, we offer support and expertise to help our customers conquer any challenge. I offered to help Laura with Key West, and she trusted our loft to coordinate the effort with her.

The first step was determining the overall goal. Every campaign wants to win, but was that priority one? We needed to define and communicate our top priority. For Key West, fun was the number one goal, but having a boat and crew capable of winning was a close second.

I sat down with Laura and discussed what it would take financially to meet her goals. The unfortunate part of sailboat racing is the cost, particularly on the road. It’s important to keep in mind what’s necessary versus what’s over-the-top. There are many moving pieces, from the boat to crew to travel. We considered all of those factors, as well as the costs. We wanted to make sure she was confident with her set-up, but also that her time on the water was fun and worth the investment.

Finding Crew

Who’s going to join you? When you’re on a budget and looking for crew for a major regatta, consider these things:

• What are the minimum/maximum crew needed to sail competitively?
• Base the crew minimum on what other teams will be using. You can’t take everyone, but in case of heavy winds or injury it doesn’t hurt to have an extra. Enlist an extra sailor to join you as shore crew. It’s helpful to have the support, and he/she can jump in if anything hits the fan. This is a good role for that up-and-coming sailor or college kid who wants to participate in a major event.
• Keep target weight and limits in mind!
• Crew location: If you don’t already have a team, or you’re short a member, look at the regatta location. Local sailors know the area and conditions well, and they can be valuable assets.
• Professional limits – how many Cat 3 (pros) allowed? If you’re allowed to have pros on board and you can afford it, take advantage! If you need help finding someone, your loft can help.
• Compatibility: If you don’t click, you won’t have fun, and you won’t be an effective team. If you can’t sail with a new team member beforehand, ask for a few references or grab a beer together before hitting the water.
• Positions: Keep positions and role specialties in mind as you choose your crew. Make sure everything’s covered so you’re not learning while racing.
• Commitment: Can they commit to a full season and become a regular part of the team?

Laura’s team included six people and targeted 1180 pounds (proposed class max weight limit). All of us had sailed with at least two of the other crew previously, we had one Cat 3 pro (per J/88 class rules), and five sailors from Laura’s area. Everyone was able to commit to the long-term goals as team.

Transportation

Once the team was finalized, we needed to book our tickets. We were early enough to get good fares directly into Key West and avoid the three-hour drive from Miami or Ft. Lauderdale (five of us even managed to land at the same time!). Plan the best way to get to the event (it’s not always flying), but watch out for low-cost options that are time and stress costly!

Once you arrange for your crew to get there, it’s boat-logistics time. If you’re transporting the boat yourself, it’s an easy decision for you and a crew member to accompany it. However, for many larger vessels, it’s best to hire a service. Regardless of who is driving, make sure your trailer is in top shape.

To transport her boat, Laura reached out to JP Boatworks in Rochester. They transport boats all over the U.S., and they rig the boats too! It’s not as cheap as doing it yourself, but it was worth the peace of mind and ease. When it’s time for on-site logistics, talk to a local for some insider information. Consider the costs you might incur, but also consider time and convenience. If you book the cheap hotel across town, how will you get to the docks? Will you need to rent a car? Will the long trips to-and-from the docks make it hard for your team to be effective and efficient? Things to consider include:

• Prior experience at a location
• Distance to the venue (the closer the better)
• Cost
• Where will you eat?
• Can you keep food on the boat?
• Parking and commuting logistics

If you don’t have a local resource, call the local loft or marina. Laura talked to local sailors and found great accommodations that checked all the right boxes. We stayed close to regatta HQ and our boat dock. Each crew chimed in about what foods they wanted, and all the meals were planned out. We ate out twice and cooked for ourselves the other nights.

Preparing your Boat

It’s great to have new hardware and sails, but the gains are not always worth the cost. When it comes to sails, you can prolong sail life or breathe life back into them – especially if recuts are an option! We inventoried and reviewed Laura’s program and were lucky the boat and sails were generally new and well-prepared. Things we looked at included:

• Condition of existing sail inventory: Look at everything! Figure out what needs updates, repairs, or to be replaced.
• Fill missing inventory: Make sure you have the right sails for the conditions and class.
• Pictures: Photos of your sails on your boat help you know if the shape, trim, or tuning are issues.
• Label and store sails: Bag, tag, and store sails. Make sure they’re where they need to be to get to the event (on the boat, shipped, etc.).

Laura had all the sails inspected at the loft: the mainsail, two jibs, and two spinnakers. She bought the boat with most of the inventory, so it wasn’t all new, but it wasn’t all bad. We worked with the Quantum’s J/88 designer to get updated luff offsets for the outdated J2/3, and we re-faired the sail to the new design. We also made some repairs to the heavy air spinnaker. We only replaced one spinnaker and the mainsail. This approach saved significant money versus buying a new inventory. It wasn’t all new, but it was solid.

Bottom and Rig Prep

Prep as much as possible before leaving, giving every section of the boat attention. When it comes to the bottom, make sure it and the foils are as smooth as possible. If not, make a plan to fix it.

Hijinks’ bottom was not competition-ready. It was pretty much stock from the factory, so we sent it to the pros at Waterline Systems. It can be expensive to have the bottom professionally prepared, but it should be a one-time expense with minor upkeep. It also provides peace of mind knowing that your hull and foils are fully optimized.

Make sure to reserve time to check the rigging. If the boat is being trailered, the mast will be down, but that doesn’t mean you can’t inventory and check the halyards/sheets. They should have high tech/low stretch materials and solid working shackles. Make sure everything is set up as efficiently as possible, and make sure the mast, boom, spreaders, and shrouds are in good order.

Laura’s boat is new to her, but, at only three years old, was in relatively good order. We needed to replace the jib sheets with new ones, and we added some shackles and new deck hardware to accommodate cross sheeting the jib to the weather side. The team sailed to determine exactly what worked and what could be improved before making the final to-do list.

We were extremely lucky that the boat also included the latest B&G instrument system. We contacted B&G and had a representative come check everything to make sure it was one-hundred percent. We planned how to use the system, then picked a crew member to be in charge of it, knowing it inside and out and troubleshooting it as needed.

In Conclusion

Remember, the better prepared you are, the more time you have to spend on the water and enjoying your event. After all, isn’t that the reason we travel to new, exciting places? All in all the 2017 Quantum Key West Race Week checked all the boxes; not only did we have a blast (our main goal!), everything went smoothly and we won our class. Until next year!

This tip has been brought to you by Quantum Sails.

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Let’s file this one under, “Things that make my palms sweat.”

Quantum Racing is on the eve of beginning our 2017 season. A 60-race no throwout regatta that rewards consistent yachting, boatspeed, and reliability in our gear. In our three month “off season” we took a critical look at all areas of improving Quantum Racing’s performance. One area we looked hard at, but is difficult to quantify, is windage. Think about it in terms of a floppy shirt versus a shirt that is pulled tight on your body. For sure a tight shirt is less windage than so following this thought process we looked at the most obvious area, the shrouds.

In the quest of a 1-percent performance gain Quantum Racing researched the Southern Spars’ Razr product. The shrouds are solid carbon and roughly 30 percent smaller in diameter than the existing ECsix rigging, which is also a Southern project that was on Quantum Racing. The upside to Razr rigging is the windage reduction in the open course equals about 8 meters per windward leg. The benefit is even better in less than 12 knots of wind. Yet, in 2016, we had three port-starboard crossings that resulted in protest flags being green flagged by the umpires, demonstrating the game of inches we play. These crosses are too close. We’ll take every opportunity to gain a meter… or 8.

The downside of Razr is its fragility and reliability. With every equipment decision of this importance, we have to check reliability against the performance gain. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being incredibly reliable, the ECsix rigging was a 9. The new rigging is sitting somewhere at about 5. Not because the rigging will break under load, but because it’s fragile when handled. We cannot grab a D1 when it’s slack and pull it, for risk of breaking the shroud near the turnbuckle. There are currently three boats in the TP52 fleet using it and it’s been reliable thus far, with only one known breakage on account of human error. Therein lays the problem: our entire team must be vigilant with not dragging sails around the D1s or randomly grabbing them as we get on and off the boat. Anybody who sails by us in the waters off of Key West will see orange fluorescent tape on both D1s to remind all of us: “DO NOT TOUCH!”

Things that make my palms sweat as if the competition alone is not enough. Still, I’m really looking forward to getting the party started.

[Ed’s note: a Southern Spars representative confirms the Razr product, initially developed by FutureFibres, is strictly targeted for grand-prix programs.]

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The big regatta is here. You’ve practiced. You’ve got new sails. You’ve polished your bottom in the proper “Zen” fashion. You’ve even purchased new running rigging, which you just installed. The breeze is up, and at the first weather mark you’re in the top group. But then, the spinnaker doesn’t get all the way up, and you get rolled by a seemingly endless train of boats. Tactics aside, what went wrong? You find out later that your mastman had trouble with the brand new spinnaker halyard slipping through his hand.

The issue is that many ropes with polyester covers have elements in the finishing to produce better abrasion resistance. The elements in the finish of those lines can produce a slippery feeling. This “hard” finish is especially present when you first use the rope and is worse if the line is wet.

Not everyone thinks about preparing line for use, but there are a few steps you can follow to give it the same attention as other parts of your boat, helping ensure that the next time you go for a hoist or trim a sheet, the crew will be able to easily handle the line.

1. After any splicing, soak it in a bucket of fresh water overnight to loosen up the finish.

2. The next day, wash it under the faucet in warm water. You’ll see bubbles appearing and feel your hands getting slippery as the finish comes off. It takes a few minutes before the bubbles subside.

3. Use the halyard for two days before racing to get it worked in.

If you can’t work in the halyard before using it, lightly abrade it with sandpaper. This is best done by running the halyard through the mast and then pulling it up to the top of the mast as if the sail was fully hoisted. Using 220-grit sandpaper, lightly sand the area from where it comes out of the mast for around 15-20 feet, which is where they’ll be handled when the load is the greatest. Sand until a very light fuzz to start appearing on the cover. Don’t sand too much, as you can always sand again. Similarly, for sheets, figure out where they will be handled when the load is greatest, and sand there.

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I often sail on boats where the owner has recently purchased new running rigging, and just as often I note that the new rigging isn’t quite perfect. Often, that’s because many boat owners don’t know what to ask for when talking to their rigger. Here are some guidelines.

Some simple terminology

Taper:To safe weight, many lines are stripped of their cover where the cover is not needed. The area where the cover stops and is then buried into the core is the taper.

Core bump: As line technology advances, many lines can be smaller than the clutches that were originally designed with the boat can handle. A core bump is a smaller line inserted into the primary core in the area where the line would pass through the clutch when the associated sail is in use. This enlarges the line in that area, allowing the clutch to hold it securely.

Flemish eye: The Flemish eye is a small eye spliced at the tail end to aid in reeving halyards in and out of the mast or through clutches. The Flemish eye is a must for all halyards and “Domino” style clutches. Domino clutches have a series of eyes that the rope passes through inside the clutch rather then the standard clutch that has a mechanism that compresses down on the rope. For sheets using standard compression clutches, a simple whipping is easier to pass through the clutch then a Flemish eye.

Some basics:

• Stopper balls on spinnaker halyards prevent the shackle from damaging the sheave when fully hoisted, thus resulting in added halyard chafe as it runs around the sheave.
• Stopper balls on jib or genoa halyards may prevent full hoist of sails. Thus I rarely use stopper balls on jib halyards.
• Asymmetrical spinnaker sheet ‘pigtails’ should be kept short for efficiency. The shorter the ‘pigtail’ the less the spinnaker clew travels forward in the gybe thus staying full longer and filling on the new gybe sooner.
• Tapers save weight but reduce the life of the line, as exposed core is prone to chafe and UV damage.

Ordering line

If the line passes through a clutch, check the clutch for its rated sizes and be sure it can accept the line. If the line is not passing through a clutch, make sure it is a diameter the crew can hang onto during its intended use. Softer ropes are generally better for purchases, such as cunninghams and travelers, while stiffer ropes are generally better for more direct pulls, such as jib sheets and afterguys.

Finishing

Can the line be tapered to save weight? If so, measure where the taper should be. For example, pull a tape measure up on the halyard being measured for and measure to where the halyard comes out of the mast. Subtract a few inches, and this is your taper location. This process ensures that your mast man is always handling a covered section of line and that the core is out of the elements when the halyard is up.

Chafe Protection

The most common chafe protector on small- to medium-sized boats is a white Dyneema cover. These are put on the halyard for a few feet at the shackle end to eliminate chafe at sheaves and eyes. Many riggers will dye this cover to match the halyard. Further, you can increase the line’s lifespan by pulling all of your halyards to the top of the mast when not in use using a messenger line attached to a Flemish eye at the end of the halyard. If you don’t need an eye, whip the end of the halyard to prevent fraying.

Shackle Choice

I’m partial to the newer soft-style shackles, and my new favorite is the “Button Shackles” that I’ve been purchasing from RigWorks in San Diego. These are very similar to the standard soft shackle, but there is added security because the loop goes around the aluminum button. They are also easier and less time consuming to get on and off.

For more information on caring for and extending the life of your lines, visit the RigWorks website here.

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