Sails, Rigging & Deck Gear

Ten years ago, you may recall having seen the Walder boom brake demonstrated at sailboat shows. There wasn't anything quite like it. The device caught on for a time with single-handed racers, who liked the way it slowly eased the boom across during jibes. (Philippe Jeantot had one on Credit Agricole when he won the first BOC Challenge.) When your hands are full with jib sheets and the wheel or tiller, there's too often the tendency not to pull in the mainsheet to minimize the shock load on the gooseneck when the boom slams across to the new tack.

The loads of a flying jibe in late summer squall are enough to shred sails, rip out deck or boom fittings, bend or break the boom gooseneck, or even bend the boom itself. The novice sailor learns very quickly to be wary of an unintentional jibe.

Ideally, you don't put yourself in a position where an accidental jibe can happen, but even an experienced sailor can get caught off guard by sudden, violent wind shifts in mountainous coastal areas or in night-time squalls. The most common way to take the fright out of an unintentional jibe involves a preventer, something weve examined in a number of previous reports. Preventers are especially useful when sailing deep downwind in rolly conditions, when exaggerated yawing lets the wind sneak behind the mainsail.

For maximum maneuverability, the control lines-one port, one starboard-should attach at the widest part of the boat. This maximizes leverage and places the effort close to the center pivot point. On a catamaran, closer to the transom works because of the wide beam, but for monohulls, attaching near the pivot point at the keel will be more responsive. For maximum responsiveness, the drogue should be as close to the transom as practical-this results in more responsive steering and minimal drag. We found the best compromise to be around 65-80 percent of the way aft, where there is still enough beam, but less risk of the control lines fouling.

In regard to your ongoing investigations of snubber hooks (Snubber Chain Hooks Revisited, February 2017), I want to add another idea to the mix. Our boat uses a fixed eye snap shackle spliced onto the end of a three-strand nylon snubber. Our shackle is similar to this Wichards 2 -inch fixed eye snap shackle (part #2472).

Here are two good examples showing the problems associated with the lower or deck level use of swage terminals for your standing rigging. Swaging is a process where tubular stainless steel fittings are essentially crimped onto rigging wire under high pressure.

If youve ever struggled to retrieve a balky rope-to-chain back splice with your windlass, youve probably wondered if there wasnt a better approach. The problem becomes especially acute if youve upgraded to higher tensile chain and want to use nylon rode with the same approximate tensile strength.

Dinghies are the Rodney Dangerfields of cruising. They get no respect, or at least not as much as they deserve. The little boat that will see nearly as many sea miles as the mother ship is often an afterthought.

Last spring we reported on tests of chain hooks (see Testing the Effects of Chain Hooks, PS March 2016). Those tests found that some hooks reduced the strength and seriously damaged the retained chain. The maker of one of the hooks, Mantus, criticized our methods because the chain size we used did not match their specs for the hook, so we repeated the tests using different chain. (For a complete discussion of this matter, see the Inside PS blog post Can a Snubber Hook Weaken Your Chain?) We also looked at newer products that had been introduced in the interim.

Designers of boat anchors deal in a handful of variables. The holding capacity of an anchor derives from its fluke, particularly the flukes size, shape, and the angle it makes with the shank. Other parts of the anchor-shank, roll bar, and stock-allow the fluke to set and hold as the designer intended. Based on the shapes and relationships between these components, an anchor fits into one of several broad categories: fluke (Danforth, Fortress, Manson Racer), plow (CQR, Delta, Kobra, SARCA Excel), claw (Bruce, Lewmar Claw, Manson Ray, Super Max), or fisherman (Luke).