With the control deck and forward block plate fitted, we could move on to fitting the primary rig controls; Forestay, Shrouds and jib halyard. They all will have their tackle systems up in the bow area and needed to be efficiently lead back to the front of the cockpit. The objective was to create powerful systems but to keep the fore deck area as clear as possible.
Due to the design of the boat, we had to lead the forestay and jib halyard down the port side of the boat and the rig tensioning system down the starboard side. So to lead the controls to both sides of the boat, we needed to create a organising system to lead the ropes around the boat.
The forward control plate was designed to provide the purchase base for the Forestay and Shrouds, with the Jib Halyard system on the deck. So we had 3 double ended (Well ultimately continuous) systems that needed to be organised.
To do this we decided to design a custom deck organiser system, similar to the ones used on Big Boats. Harken’s range of 16mm blocks also have the option to just buy the sheave.
We made the face plates from 3mm Carbon plate, with the pins made from 5mm Carbon pins. Organisers these were fitted to the deck using M4 Bolts.
With the basics in place the next step was to set up the anchoring points for the forestay. There was no reinforcement built into the hull where we wanted to put the anchoring points, so we needed to reinforce the hull.
To do this we bonded the 3mm carbon plate to the bare carbon composite. As the deck had been sprayed, we taped around the area we wanted to attach the plate to and sanded back the paint so we could bond direct to the composite. Additionally we split the anchoring points for the Forestay and Jib Halyard across 4 points. Two anchoring points and two turning blocks. The tails of the Forestay where split across both anchoring points.
In terms of power in the cascades for the Forestay, we have a 40:1 system, with a Antel low friction ring on the 4mm Marlow D12 Max ‘soft’ forestay, 2 Harken T2 18mm Carbo Block, then led via a 16mm Harken Check block to a 5:1 system made up of a T2 18mm Double block and 2 T2’s 18mm single blocks and a double 18mm T2 block on the forward block plate splitting the tails to both sides of the boat. The handled control lines are 4mm Marlow Excel.
The Jib halyard system has to be linked to the forestay control. As the rake changes we need the jib halyard to tighten and release with it, while any system won’t be 100% accurate, it means we should only need to make minimal changes to the jib halyard when we change the rake.
The system works as follows; the jib halyard runs directly to the Forestay’s Antel ring and comes forward to a Harken 16mm cheek block and then back to its purchase system. It creates a S shaped loop in the system, as the Antel ring moves forwards and backwards it tightens or releases the jib halyard at the same time.
The jib halyard purchase system is made up of 4 Harken 16mm Cheek blocks and 3 Harken 16mm single blocks. The system creates an 8:1 purchase on the jib halyard again split to both sides of the boat. The control line is 3mm Marlow Excel Race.
The rig tensioning system runs down the other side of the bow. We kept the boat’s original set up with the purchase systems split between the wings & space frame and in the bow area of the boat. The 3:1 on the end of the wings, this system also acts as the tensioning system for the uppers, these feed on to a 2:1 before leading on to an Antel Ring in the bow area.
For the main cascade system, the tail of the main shrouds are spliced around a second Antel ring, for the moment we are then running a 2nd 2:1 through the ring and onto a 6:1 pulley system made up from a 3 T2 Single blocks and 2 T2 Double Blocks, one of the single blocks was setup as a becket on the floating double block. Gives a purchase 70:1, which is probably overkill, but we had a bit of a maths mistake. Blaming T Bear for that one…
Again this uses 4mm Marlow Excel race as the control tail.
All three systems come back to the forward control deck, and then through to the back of the racks and into the take up tunnels in the hull. By angling the rope run the way we did, we were able to use the existing take up run holes in the wings and thus the existing take up tunnels.
As was no existing reinforcement for the deck fittings, we used the same process to reinforce the deck as we did for the anchoring point, 3mm carbon plate bonded to the deck, this should give sufficient reinforcement for the loads.