Boat Maintenance Tips

Spinnakers Without Tears & Split Mainsheets: Solved

How to Stop Your Spinnaker Halyard Getting Jammed?

When pulling it up or "your standing on the spinny halyard" When pulling it down "- ***m its re-cleated again". This short video shows you what we did recently to solve this problem. Its a development of what we have seen on a well rigged Feva and appears to make the kite sheet run smoothly. The trick is to use a stainless ring and 3mm elastic to pull the halyard to one side of the cleat - so it will not cleat - unless you get the tension when the kite reaches the top of the mast. We have also recently changed the kite halyard to some nice 4mm Spinfast: Its less sticky in the boat - runs faster and is less likely to snag.

We have also been doing some boat bimbling on our mainsheet bridle system.

Dual Core sheet has two Dynema cores, one inside each other. The outer sheet is easy to open up to take out the two Dynema cores, you can then cut it, taper it and feed it inside the two Dynema cores to make a smooth transition. I then sewed some whipping twine into it to make it secure at each end. To make the split bridle part - you can take the inner core out from the middle core, weave it in and out once and Bob's your uncle. You might also notice some more bimbling on the outhaul. A couple of basic loops in the end of the red and blue spectra lines for the flattener and outhaul - which quickly and safely loop around the boggles attached to the boom.