Jib halyard tensioner

[GreenLake]

It won't, but it can be moved (when not under tension). That's the idea.

[tomodda]

Looks like a good plan! I'm still busy trying to convince my crew to tension the halyards decently just on the main line, will worry about tensioners some other time.

[GreenLake]

You simply can't get decent tension with the halyard, at least not the way it's rigged on my boat. When I jury rigged the first attempt at a tensioner, it was child's play by comparison.

[jalmeida51]

Yesterday I rigged my jib halyard almost the same way that is shown on the Hobbie Cat. (picture on another post ) I put the cheek blocks on the side of the mast and ran the bitter end through a standup bock the by the mast tabernacle. Ran it through a bulls eye to a cam cleat on the cabin roof. I have more purchasing power and the halyard is much tighter now. It will be interesting to see if there is enough purchasing power to make the luff smooth and flatten the jib. Tomorrow winds 15, good day to see if this helps.

[GreenLake]

BTW, "purchasing power" is the economic term -- in this case its simply "purchase".

I've looked at the Hobie Cat image but can't see where it has an increased purchase. at all. It seems to have a 1:2 and 2:1 back to back, cancelling each other.

[GreenLake]

Some results.
When I tested the Prusik loop manually it held firm, but we found that on the boat it slid under load.

The halyard tail is a bit different material, although same diameter as the rope I used for testing.

Luckily, the place where the tail is spliced to the halyard has a slight bump and we could fix the issue by moving the loop above it. The 2:1 was sufficient to easily control and set the desired tension in moderate conditions.

Now we need more practice. It's easy to spot when there's insufficient tension, as the luff will scallop, but it's harder to notice when tension needs to come off again.

[Fly4rfun]

My mind is going to explode from reading all this information. I want to try this stuff, but at this point it's like buying a 5000 dollar stereo system when you have 500 dollar ears. but it is food for thought. and i enjoy the education.

[GreenLake]

You need to be out on the water with your DS about a dozen times, and the all the then familiar stuff will fade into the background and your mind will be ready for more.

[tomodda]

Gary:

Yeah, slow down. The boat has 5 primary controls - jib sheet, maiin sheet, rudder, centerboard, and your weight (balance). GL wrote it up quite well in his Intro to Sailing post. Learn those. Get to the point where you can "feel" what the boat is doing with eyes closed. THEN you can start thinking about the other stuff. I always say that your most important sensor when sailing is your butt FEEL the ball... (Caddyshack reference)

Also, truth be told, things like the jib halyard tensioner probably don't add all that much speed. It's all "style points. " I *HATE* a saggy luff on my jib, also known as "scallops." But does it really affect my speed? Me losing 20 pounds of gut would probably increase my boatspeed WAY more!

Seriously, after you learn the basics, rig yourself a better vang. Now THAT made a helluva difference and improvement on speed and handling. Well worth it!

[Fly4rfun]

Thank you Tom, good advice. now how do I rig a trapeze ?

[tomodda]

Pour enough beer into your crew so that they're willing to do it. After that doesn't really matter HOW you rig it, they won't care

[GreenLake]

Update.

I now have several seasons of use from the setup described here. It generally works as intended, and there are no planned changes pending.

Some notes;

I went to the limit on the diameter. Clearly the modern rope, though it looks like just a bit of thread, is up to the task. It does make it difficult to get tension on it by a simple grip. My workaround is a two-handed operation. Grab the end of the tail, let it fall in a U shape, then use the heel of the other hand to push down to put tension on. The first hand has to just provide enough counter tension to keep the line from slipping around the hand pushing down. Anybody who's ever worked on a boat with winches will know the effect you get from even a partial "wrap" of a line. Even though I'm mentioning wrap, I'm careful to never wrap a line around a hand to pull on it. Hence the use of a partial, open U "wrap". It's less complicated to do than describe, has become second nature to me, but I seem to need to explain it to every new person crewing with me. If I did it again, might choose a beefier line just for that.

As mentioned, the Prusik slips and requires the slight bump from the spliced on tail to find a grip. But then it's solid. I read somewhere that the relative diameters matter when dimensioning a Prusik knot for a given line. Also, both the material for the Prusik and the line may be more slippery than optimal. I use something similar to hold the clew of my jib to the jibsheet and that never shifted (but the forces are a bit lower as well. If I were to redo this, I'd pay attention to the materials to guarantee more friction.

But the main point is that this has functioned well in tensioning the jib halyard and allows me to take the 'scallops' out off the luff when the wind increases.

[tomodda]

Thank you for the updated notes! My new DS is going to need a whole new jib halyard temsioner setup because of internal halyard runs. You Prusik setup is high on the list of possibilities for me.

[GreenLake]

Looks like I never added a photo of my setup to this thread. I've had one in my gallery for while, so here it is:



This photo shows one of the earliest realizations of this; the biggest change I made was to use a line of a different color to be able to color-coordinate it with the cleat on the cuddy edge. In this early incarnation the jib halyard tensioner uses a blue line.

The position of the fairlead was dictated by the metal plate to which it is attached. All things being equal a position closer to the mast would have been better.

[GreenLake]

Here's another image showing a more recent incarnation. I've added arrows to indicate in order from top to bottom the location of the Prusik knot, the block and hook, the horn cleat onto which the halyard is belayed, the fairlead and the cam cleat for the tensioner.

2:1 jib halyard tensioner

Jib-tensioner-2.jpg (113.82 KiB) Viewed 14532 times

The green line is the jib sheet and the orange line is the painter (dock line) temporarily secured to a free horn cleat.
(Also shown is the boom vang)