Another mainsheet...

[Richard_Blake]

... double-ended, decided on for gaffer. Main around 475 square feet, long counter aft of rudder post, where the central block mounting will be. Eyebolts on side decks, outboard of rudder post. Tails will run forward to samson posts at aft corners of cockpit (we've discovered the tugboat hitch - great for cold weak fingers and wet lines.). My question, because I'm planning ahead while re-framing the counter and can adjust strong points accordingly, is: do we go for a horse, or choose that buffer system with two shackle-like things sliding on steel bar compressing chunks of rubber? I'm leaning towards the buffer, largely to minimise clutter on deck, but I'd be interested in people's experiences. Does a horse, in our case maximum 2 feet long, have real advantages in terms of vertical pull direction, for example? Can a buffer really make a shock-absorbing difference in a gybe?

Thanks in advance
Richard

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[Mirelle]

I have almost precisely the system, and sail area, that you describe.

A horse is pointless and will just trip you up if you are standing on the counter.

Yes, the buffer (I have one) works well.

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[Richard_Blake]

Once again thanks. Confirms our thinking - will start looking in catalogues.
Do you also have some kind of system - I've seen coil springs - to keep the deck blocks fairly upright, like those little toy men you could never knock over?

Am getting close to really tackling the counter at last, after being slowed up by endless picking out and filling of old holes where frames were replaced long ago. Plugged unfortunately with dowels - so the grain direction has sucked water into the planks. We've caught it just in time.
You suggested Watts and Jurd as good construction reading - I found the Jurd second hand and it's useful. Couldn't trace a copy of the original Watts which I suspect may have been more detailed?
Next door neighbour threw out rolls of brand new stiff wallpaper, which I'm using to make mock-ups of counter shape. Can't be pure smack, because the hull was raised a strake in the conversion to yacht. Old form was not right aesthetically or in construction terms, so we're looking for elegance with a smack echo!

Of course we expected that everything would take longer than expected, but we didn't expect how much longer! Each stage, in itself, is going well, however. Except for occasional panics when I do something silly with a sterntube! Will try to post a photo at some stage - but in spite of recent thread on other forum don't yet understand how. Will re-read my "internet for idiots".

Richard

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[Mirelle]

The deck blocks for the mainsheet are not really a problem, because the mainsheet is almost always under tension except when in the process of tacking or gybing.

A detail modification that I have been meaning to do for ages is to fit a fairing block at each end of the mainsheet buffer to stop the mainsheet hanging up on the ends of the buffer when gybing in gentle conditions - if it is at all bouncy I always pin the mainsail in hard before gybing anyway, so as to set up the runners, so the problem does not arise.

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[Richard_Blake]

Good. Simpler the better. Fairing blocks are a good tip. Although fitting those and actually sailing all seems a long way away at the moment. It strikes me that you may have come across Edith in the past. She was owned long ago by a Dr. Mackenzie, I think, in Woodbridge. At that point her foredeck was raised to bulwark height for space below - a kind of Maurice Griffiths-type smack! We found her much later, about 12 years ago, lying at the Melton boatyard just above Woodbridge.

Richard

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[Mirelle]

I've been racking my memory, but I am not sure that I do remember her. I probably think I do!

Moray McPhail at Classic Marine made our buffer - I noticed that it was on the original drawings, but, like the Wykeham Martin gear on the jib, had been scrubbed to get the cost down, when she was new, so I had a lot of pleasure fitting it.

The generic problem with any deck fittings on the counter is getting to the underside, to fasten them, if, like us, you have a selfdraining cockpit! In our case, the quarter posts and the wooden rudder trunking combine to block access by wriggling down the quarter berth and one ends up hanging upside down in the (small) lazarette hatch!

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[Peterduck]

Talking of double-ended mainsheets; when I built the blocks for my mainsheet I made each of them from a single piece of jarrah and they are wire stropped on the outside. The wire is served, of course. The wire strop prevents me from extending the sheave pin out the side to serve as a belay as was used on the Banks schooners, so I fashioned the cheeks of the blocks with horns on one side of each cheek, I just wind the sheet around the horns a couple of times to belay it. The horns lie parallel to the swallow of the block and are on the side where the line exits the block.
Peter.

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[Richard_Blake]

Yes indeed, that generic problem is why I'm trying to plan well while I have a gaping hole under the counter. Carry can crawl up and reach the eyebolt nuts, luckily. I can't. Anything further aft will become a pretty permanent installation. We've got four fairly substantial horn timbers running up there, plus the two outside pieces - quarter posts? fashion pieces? I'm slightly confused by terminology from different sources: arch board, stern chock, bib, rim block, etcetera. Fairly clear now what's needed, and can visualize each bit and what it does, but talking about it clearly is tricky.

Nice little piece of irony: the evening before your post I was reading a running rigging article by Moray McPhail in an old Boatman, in which he's pretty scathing about any form of double-ended mainsheet.... I can't find buffers or drawings thereof in any catalogues, so he looks like our best bet. Does yours have a base plate for fastening down, or are there through-bolts incorporated in the casting?
I'm wondering, while I have the gaping hole, about drilling and tapping two substantial pieces of metal, and fixing them permanently under holes in 2 horn timbers so bolts can be screwed down from above. That would mean, though, that whatever is above has to be able to turn for the screwing, if you see what I mean. Wouldn't work with through-bolts immovably fixed to the ends of the buffer bar.

I shall now go and do something which doesn't need decisions - like checking and tightening rudder trunking bolts. There's a psychology to this boat business, I'm learning, including planning mindless, blinkered jobs ready for days when it all seems too daunting!

Richard

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[Richard_Blake]

Re: horned blocks

Handsome idea. Can't use it on our mainsheet - blocks out of reach - but will use it for staysail sheet when we restore it to traditional smack self-tacking. here in the Netherlands I quite often see wooden blocks with single carved horns, but not double.

Richard

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[Mirelle]

The disgraceful answer to your question about bolts is that I cannot remember, and will have to have a look on Saturday!

I have sometimes thought that a single ended mainsheet with a double block on the buffer would be better, but whenever I try to visualise the lead of the hauling end of the sheet I get stuck! I certainly would not be comfortable with having to deal with the sheet on the lee side.



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