Tag: rigging

Rigging3 Comments

Handy and Cheap Line Hangers

$tingy Sailor

When I first started sailing, I stored all my unused lines, sheets, and cords in a large plastic bag in the starboard lazarette. I knew there was a better way to organize them, but I hadn’t seen it yet. First, I came across some teak line caddys. And while I liked their design and the fact that the teak would look at home in Summer Dance, they wouldn’t afford a lot of storage for the amount of space that they would occupy. In a C-22, you have to maximize every cubic inch.

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Rigging, Sails41 Comments

How to Rig a Cruising Spinnaker in 4 Stingy Stages

$tingy Sailor

If you don’t have a spinnaker for your sailboat yet, aren’t you a little envious of those big, colorful, billowing sails you sometimes see at your favorite cruising spots? Nothing says, “Yeah, we’ve got this!” quite like a racing or cruising spinnaker. It’s as though the sailboat is puffing its chest out with confidence and strength. No wonder it’s called the fun sail.

In this post, I describe the strategy I used to get started with an asymmetrical spinnaker. You can use the same strategy with a symmetrical spinnaker but the cost is higher due to the required whisker pole and its control lines.

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Rigging, Videos31 Comments

Quit Spending Setup Time on Turnbuckles

$tingy Sailor

Turnbuckles are great for tuning your rig but they’re the least convenient way imaginable to loosen and detach the forestay and lower shrouds for unstepping the mast. I vowed long ago that I would quit wasting time on turnbuckles during setup and tear-down.

This post is a companion to my previous post How to step a mast single-handed with or without using the boom as a gin pole. I mentioned quick release levers in that post and you can also see them in use there, but they need more explanation together with the other topics in this post.

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Accessories, Mast, Tips, Videos58 Comments

How to Step a Mast Single-Handed With or Without Using the Boom as a Gin Pole

$tingy Sailor

How do you step the mast on your trailerable sailboat? With a gin pole? With the trailer winch? With the help of friends or family? With your fingers crossed? No single system works for every sailboat or for every skipper. If you’re new to mast stepping, you don’t like your current method, or you just want to simplify or speed up the process, this post is for you. I must warn you though, this is a long post, even for me. To make it as short as possible, I’ve included five YouTube videos that show how this system works. By the end of this post, you’ll know everything about how I step the mast on Summer Dance single-handed in minutes, even on the water.

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Rigging18 Comments

Single Line Jiffy Reefing Made Easy

$tingy Sailor

Your ability to reef your mainsail is one of the most important sailing skills that you can learn. Your reefing rigging plays an important part in that. You can do it with just a few short lengths of rope but it will be more time consuming and difficult than it needs to be. That method is not very safe to use during the weather conditions when you’re most likely to need to reef. Having a system of reefing lines in place and ready to use at any time increases your ability to reef smoothly and efficiently (in a jiffy) when conditions warrant it, particularly if you sail single-handed.

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Rigging25 Comments

Lead All Lines To the Cockpit For Safer Sailing

$tingy Sailor

The factory running rigging on most small sailboats, including the Catalina 22, is minimal to keep the price low. That is, the halyards and any other control lines are only long enough to fasten them to nearby cleats. Convenience and trimming for performance are a luxury reserved for larger, more expensive sailboats.

It works okay, but it makes having a crew more of a necessity and it’s not ideal in heavy winds when leaving the cockpit to trim the rigging can be unsafe. For safety and to add more control lines, such as a headsail downhaul, single-line reefing, and boom downhaul without requiring more trips forward, the solution is to lead the lines aft to the cockpit. It’s also a good idea if you ever want to sail single-handed or race competitively.

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Boom9 Comments

Control Mainsail Draft with a Boom Downhaul

$tingy Sailor

A boom downhaul is one of the three possible control lines for the three sides of the mainsail. The other two are the boom vang (controls leech tension) and the mainsail outhaul (controls foot tension). Catalina 22 and similar sailboats have a  short length of line attached to the bottom of the gooseneck car on the boom that ties off to a cleat at the base of the mast as shown below.  It simply keeps the boom from sliding up past a certain point on the mast after you hoist the mainsail. It gets the job done but it isn’t easy to adjust, especially while under sail.

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