MartinRF

I have 35-ish years of experience of a fully battened mainsail (square top at that for the last 22 years) of about 30 sqm and I don't think the weight of the battens is what bothers you if you have problems hoisting your sail. I would take a look a at what I could do about friction. In my case it helps a lot to clean the luff grove of the mast. Batten pocket hardware and how the sailmaker positioned it relative to the bolt rope also plays a sigificant role. All this assumes bolt rope in luff groove. Dirt and friction are factors regardless. /Martin

OK, I know this thread has been hibernating for two weeks now but I just came to think of this old dinghy description by Richard and Lilian Woods. See attached document.Crayfish__Woods_1982.pdf /Martin

👍 /Martin

I asked for the source of the efficiency figures appearing in your first post. That was all. /Martin

So the data is your own? /Martin

This made me remember an anecdote told to me by a fellow at usenet news rec.boats when that forum was still active. My source had worked either for the U.S. Navy or the Coast Guard in southern California back in the day when hippies were a thing. One day they came across this sail boat heading straight out into the Pacific Ocean and since they were already some distance from the coast they decided to check things out. The boat was crewed by a bunch of young, bearded men claiming they were heading for Hawaii. Sure enough they had food and water to last the trip but very little navigational

Where did you get those efficiency numbers from? The reason for asking is I looked into this (for non-vehicle reasons) a few years ago and what I found then was not that high. /Martin

Mousing line in place! 4 x 3 m lengths of 16 mm plastic piping made it possible as it was quite easy to push the plastic tube all the way from the bottom of the spar to the top. Cutting the end of the leading tube to a sharp point helped avoiding catching on rivets and bolts. A 4 mm hole drilled near the tip was used to attach the mousing line and the sheave at the mast top was removed to make access easier there. The rest should be routine work (famous last words?). /Martin

Good idea, only snag is that there is no way to get to the top of the mast to feed bicycle chain into mast. I have even saved some worn out bicycle chain in case I may need it for this purpose. Main idea right now (before going to bed) is to get some cheap plastic piping (16 mm outer diam, 3 m lengths) and push this in from the bottom end of the spar. I hope I can figure out a way to attach mousing line. /Martin

Tried the shop vac idea tonight -- didn't work. At best I got about 2 m in. The tube is fairly clean inside but there are some obstructions including the jib halyard and the spi halyard. I could remove them but progress stopped before I got to where they could obstruct. Also, there are a number of leak points. I tried to deal them with tape but it was not good enough to make a difference. I could push rods or tubes in from the bottom of the spar but how do I get to the mousing line at the top? Fish tape or fiberglass snake might work but I can see how they may act up on the way. Ther

Planned to rig the boat today but things did not according to plan. I use the boom, main sheet and main halyard to raise the mast. The tail of the halyard broke. No one hurt, nothing else broken as far I know. For the first time since I built this rig I am in the situation that here is neither halyard nor pilot line where the main halyard should be. When I built this rig I was working in a workshop with an air compressor so I simply blew pilot lines fitted out with simple drag devices down the mast tube. Since the mast is kind of horizontal gravitation will not be of much help and co

A home made version of this? https://marine.wichard.com/rubrique-Captive_pin-0201110100000000-ME.html Any photo? /Martin

This is very good reading of Slocum's book: https://librivox.org/sailing-alone-around-the-world-by-joshua-slocum/ /Martin

Thanks /Martin

Reminds me of the loss of Drum's keel during the Fastnet Race in 1985. /Martin