That bolt-rope jam surely is a nuisance if you're single-handing and there's
a brisk breeze and a chop while you're trying to get some sail up. In fact,
when I first set up my M15, 24 years ago now, I had all lines leading aft into
the cockpit, including a jib downhaul, and I figured I'd be running the show
from the helm at all times, but the first few attempts to raise the main
required that I keep reaching forward to clear a bolt-rope jam -- and having to
release my hold on the tiller if the jam was a 2-handed rescue -- and I
realized
it wasn't really a single-handed rig, quite.
My solution was a terrific little ball-bearing guide that fit into the slot
just below the opening into which you feed the bolt rope. The head of the
sail was fed through the guide FIRST, and then into the wide opening of the
slot
and then on up the mast. The guide was essentially a pincer shape, the way
your thumb and middle finger would look if ringed around a PVC tube, say, with
steel ball-bearings attached to "the tips of your thumb and finger." The
bearings were adjustable, so that the clearance between them permitted the sail
to pass through, but the rope was captured behind them (inside the ring of the
fingers, so to speak) and, so, fed cleanly into the opening and up the mast.
Rigging at the ramp was a bit of a checklist, as the boom's gooseneck had to
go in first and drop down out of the way, then the guide screwed into the slot
above it (but still below the wider opening.)
Unfortunately, there was one design flaw -- if the adjustment was too loose,
the bearings would fall off, as the "designer" hadn't worked out how to
include a retainer of some kind (or if there was one, was perhaps a plastic or
rubber O-ring and disintegrated over time). When a bearing about 7/8 of an
inch
falls onto the cabin top on a boat being tossed about by the chop, while you're
trying to get some sail area exposed, it can get lost. I had it for 23
years, carefully monitoring the adjustment, and then my son began to take his
highschool football playing buddies out on the boat, and "suddenly" the
bearings
inexplicably disappeared.
I have searched in vain for the device, though I have to believe it or
something like it is still on the market. I have the design well remembered,
and
could fairly easily replicate it with some metal stock from the local hardware
and a drill bit and die to cut some screw threads. (The steel bearings might
be hard to come by. Wooden substitutes would work fine, I think.)
I now always trailer, after years in a slip and the attendant weather wear on
the boat, but the idea of switching over to slides is certainly intriguing.
One thing it would permit is getting the main hanked on in the slip or before
ramp launching, yet being able to keep it flaked low on the boom to minimize
windage, which can be an issue in a marina if the breeze is up and you don't
have a lot of room. With the bolt-rope arrangement, you're left to raise the
main about halfway, just to get the job well underway, but there's that other
half that's going to jam.
I wish I could post photos here, at least of sketches, to make more clear the
workings of the guide that feeds the bolt rope up into the mast opening.
After I design and build a replacement for the now-lost version, I'll report
back on it . . . unless I go with slides, in the interim. I'm not getting any
younger, and I sometimes take the easy way out, especially if it frees up time
for sailing.
Steven Sweeney
M15 #324 "Shenanigans" (1985)
Stillwater, Minnesota
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