Now that my season is basically over I am getting a bunch of repairs, mods and restoration projects sorted on our 17. I tend to fix things that break in the winter and live with anything that might take away from sailing during the season. ~:0)
What I am wondering about is the setup on our boat for the attachment of the main sail. The mast does have the a slot as I am sure all of the masts have, but there is an 3" open area 12" or so above the boom where you can feed in either your slugs or bolt rope luff. The North main the boat came with has slugs. (a wonderful sail btw) The part that has been irritating for me has been the fact that I needed to be at the base of the mast to both feed slugs past the opening to raise sail....and to help them past the opening when bringing the sail down. This process is slow and not much fun. I am hoping to run my main halyard to the cockpit eventually. I had thought to make a filler piece out of some UHMW that would keep the opening closed and continue to use the slugs. But then when I was working on something else last night, I noticed the sail also has a nice bolt rope sewn into it, the slugs are attached in such a way that they could be easily taken off. Now what I am wondering is.....how do you flake a sail that has a bolt rope luff? Does it come out of the slot at that point.....I am sure it would have to be able to come out of the slot to be able to flake it on the boom. What is the usual setup on these boats folks? I have mostly experienced slugged luffs and gaffers with hoops and rope luffs.....and it seemed to me that the one raceboat I was on with a rope luff had all of the groove removed from about 10" above the boom and down to the gooseneck. Thanks in advance for the help. Cheers, Tim D M17 #369 'Puff' _______________________________________________ http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/montgomery_boats
