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Big day, the weather was great in Ireland, despite a bad forecast, we had sunshine and light winds. Rather than doing some epoxy repair work to the 14, decided to hit the RS600 hard.
We’ve put in a 2:1 halyard, with a 2mm Spectra line. Reason for this is fairly simple a 2:1 system has less drop when the mast bends, and 2mm spectra is light. Just waiting for a Tooth Rack to arrive from the UK to finish everything.
We drilled a 3mm hole in the mast head unit so we could splice around the back of the unit to spread the load. This maximises the hoist height, but hopefully won’t weaken the unit to much, time will tell…
For the Cunningham we decided on a 8:1 purchase, initially we went for a three part cascade system (2:1 to 2:1 to 2:1), but we didn’t feel the travel was enough and changed it to 2:1 to 4:1 with a double block.
To make the Cunningham removable, we have a double ended splice attached to the hull, the Red Dog Bone, you can see in the centre of the above picture passes through the loop to anchor the SlyPIg. To keep the load in the same place as before we put the original SS Loop back in. The single block at the base is cow hitched with a spectra loop. Giving us a 8:1 purchase, same as we use on the 14.
For the Vang we followed the existing 16:1 system with 3mm Spectra tails. We created a 5mm spectra loop which runs through the aft main sheet anchoring point to give at the maximum travel possible. Getting the travel correct on the tails is a matter of fine tuning, so rather than putting Brumel locked splices at the base of the vang we used normal slices, which use friction in the splice to stop them moving. Give us the option of fine tuning the setup the lengths for the Vang tails, before we do the final tails.
The anchoring lines for the mainsheet blocks, on the boom, are again 5mm Spectra, we put a spliced eye and then did the same locked loop splice we used for the tail blocks.
Mainsheet is 7mm Marlow Excel Fusion through Harken 29mm carbo blocks, and the bridles are 3mm spectra, again setup so we can adjust the lengths.
All the control lines are 4mm Marlow Excel Control, as it is one of the relatively easiest ropes to splice into a continuous control system. Just need to make sure we get the lengths right before we cut the rope!
For the actual take ups, we’ve followed what seems to be a common approach, a 2:1 take up from the wing to the centreline of the boat. The elastics are run through the U Strap on the back pod and we use a double block for the control lines.
We put two double blocks each side, and split the SlyPig and Vang to port and starboard respectively. So far it looks like there is sufficient take up distance for both controls.
Leading everything low down in the boat should mean that the lines and elastic don’t get in the way when climbing in over the transom.
Getting really close to being finished, we need to fill the holes left over from removing the outhaul cleat, make new spectra trapeze lines and ideally get a small through deck eye so we can run the trapeze elastic around the underside of the Gunnel. After that the only large job left are the foils, but we don’t have to do those immediately. Hopefully the new tooth rack will arrive in the next couple of days and that will finish the main halyard.
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