Gardens' Annual Yard Sail

Day 1, Thursday:

Some new rigging, a tidy-up of small bits of mis-matched line, a piece of new hardware, and an experiment with lazy jacks.

I was pleased with the overall set of the mail (left the mizzen in the barn for another day) but I was not thrilled with how the mast traveler worked. Oh, it hoisted the yard & sail just fine. But on lowering the sail, the yard was a bit unruly and when the yard was almost (but not quite) all the way down the mast traveler kept lowering, losing halyard tension on the yard and the loop on the yard popped off the hook of the mast traveler. (That is one messy sentence!) Lazy-jacks helped somewhat but the yard still popped off the hook. Perhaps a stopper of some sort on the mast to prevent the traveler from dropping lower than the yard?

The lazy-jacks presented a couple issues of their own. They really are quite a rat's nest of line and unless there is a convenient way to keep them rigged on the mast and boom for trailering, I am not convinced they would be worth the trouble of rigging for day-sailing. However, truth be told, this was my first effort at setting up and using lazy-jacks so, maybe, operator error is to blame.

Day 2, Friday:

Definitely a better day wrestling with the lazy jacks. Shortened the aft legs, lengthened the LJ halyard/downhaul, moved the legs toward the ends of the boom. Worked on stowing/securing for trailering (needs more work). The lazy-jacks helped control the sail and, I suspect, that will improve as I tweak the system. All in all pleased to make progress.

Pro-tip: Don't Yard-Sail until after the front passes through... things got dicey...

Next issue: minimizing catching LJ on boom mounted hardware and work on tidier bundling of the yard/sail/boom package for trailering.