Tf, That makes sense...reducing the friction level should help. I ended up spraying Teflon lubricant on the slides of the mainsail which probably cut in half the effort needed to raise the sails. I wonder if that grease goo stuff would leave a mess on my sails or if it would be like the Teflon spray and just dry and be more slippery. I will check that out at West Marine. For the most part I like everything about this system except the fact that the sail won't drop. My wife and I really aren't in to racing. We just love to sail and I do like things to work well.....although I do have to admit that I am happier when my boat is passing someone as opposed to them passing me!
Jim -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, August 17, 2008 8:21 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: catalina27-talk: Twin track thingy Jim, it's most likely a TuffLuffR and it's both a boon and a hassle depending on how often you singlehand. Ideally there is a prefeeder about 18" below the entry for the luff rope and that's help if you have your main halyard running back to the cockpit. Dousing is an issue though and it sounds like your instincts are spot-on when you tried installing a downhaul...but as you mentioned, I'm not sure how effective it would be if it's run all the way up to the jib's headboard. One thing that will make setting and dousing the jib easier would be to do some maintenance on the luff foil (TuffLuff). West sells a jib foil maintenance kit which is bascially a triangle of heavy sail cloth sewn on to a fairly stiff piece of bolttope with provision to attach the jib halyard and a downhaul (or messenger) to haul the thing back down...included in the kit is a tube of greasy stuff that you apply to the bolt-rope and then you systematically haul the contraption a few feet up the jib foil, work it back and forth, remove it and re-apply a bit more of the greasy-goo and do another section further up the luff foil. After you do this your jib will drop out of the luff foil one heckuva lot easier... but you are right, unless you are changing headsails underway, the foil doesn't offer much of an advantage to a singlehander, except ease of swapping sails underway...it's faster to start the sail (no hoarde of hanks to snap on when you're up front) but it's definitely more of an issue to douse the sail without a jib downhauler. tf not down the stay (because of > the angle). That makes single handing pretty awkward (but not > impossible). > I picked up a length of rope to use as a down haul but it ended up too > short > so I couldn't use it. However after tying it on I wondered if it would > work > anyway since pulling on it would pull the top six inches that is not in > that > slide thing down over itself and probably hang up the thing anyway. I > guess > this is set up for racing since the previous owner seems to have installed > everything he could with marking numbers everywhere and way more halyards > than I will ever need! > > > > I don't have the money at this point to put on a furler unit which would > be > the obvious answer but I am curious if this is a racing set up how racers > handle it. > > > > Jim > > > > Jim Bernstorf > > Jules Distribution > > 6025 Cloverland Drive > > Brentwood, TN 37027 > > 615.833.1848 > > > >
