Help....no kicker!

[Petercatterall]

Have had valuable advice from you guys on a variety of subjects and will welcome it once more!.
I am trying to get to grips with the mysteries involved in getting the best performance from those white fluffy things.
My 'new' boat has one of those rolling booms and this prevents the use of a kicker, consequently I am unable to tension the leech as the boom moves out. This Im told is not good! ?
I 'found' in a locker a sort of horseshoe device with rollers and a couple of blocks, I reasoned that this had a part to play! first I tried using it as akicker but it did not seem to effective. I note that there are two shackle points either side of the coach roof, I guess that I could attach the device to the appropiate one of these and thus be able to tension the boom.
There must be a tried and tested solution to this, can anyone help?
Perhaps the recommendation is to scrap the rolling boom and fit a kicker, is the rolling system completly out moded? has it any merit?

 

[Avocet]

I had a similar one on my boat. The "claw" thing with the rollers on was supposed to go round the boom and the sail as it rolled round the boom but kept gradually working its way towards the mast. I tried putting an outhaul on it to "tether" it to the back of the boom but it was never particularly successful and the shape of the reefed main was never particularly good. I then tried fitting one end of a very long length of seat belt webbing to the boom and the kicker tackle to the other end of the webbing. This just got rolled up with the sail. it was a bit more effective at restraining the boom but it didn't do anything for the lousy sail shape when reefed. Also, I could only get down to what was approximately a second reef before I ran out of seat belt webbing and the top block of the tackle reached the boom.

I ended up giving up and getting slab reefing points put in the sail. These are much better - in fact the boat almost sails better with a reef in than without!

 

[Jacket]

I once sailed an old International 14 with roller reefing. The claw thing is to go round the boom. The kicking strap is attached to it. It is held in place by two bits of string, one tied to the back of the boom, one to the front. They were attached to collars which could rotate as the boom was rotated to reef the main.

The system seemed to work OK, though you had to be careful that the bits of string didn't wrap themselves around the boom as you were reefing.

'corse, the easy answer is to convert the boom to slab reefing. I know, I'm a heathen with no respect for tradition. Blame it on the engineer in me.

 

[Johnjo]

Had the very same on my boat when I bought it, sail never did reef easely
and set even worse, Bought a new main sail with slab reefing, all lines
back to the cockpit,bliss, reefing claw in my view is out of date and a
pain in the a--e ! all the best with it.

mike

 

[webcraft]

Been sailing an Albin Vega this year . . . roller reefing on the boom.

I found the sail shape really quite good and the boat surprisingly close-winded when beating with a lot of rolls in (equivalent to 2/3 slab reefs).

As most of the heavy stuff was hard on the wind with the mainsheet hardened right in lack of kicker wasn't really a problem - but at one point I did try sailing off the wind with a webbing strap rolled into the sail and it worked reasonably well.

The main thing I found was that getting a good sail shape required quite a bit of pulling on the luff to get the sail to roll neatly - you have to stop the luff sliding back along the boom as you roll it. Easier if you reef early!

This is relatively easy with a small (27ft) boat like the Vega - but a lot harder obviously in a larger boat in a blow. The only other boat I have sailed with boom roller reefing is a Moody 33S, and the sail shape on this is definitely not as good as on the Vega - might just be a size thing.

In spite of the above, I would always spend a bit to convert to slab reefing - it's simply easier when you really need things to be easier . . .

<font color=blue>Nick</font color=blue>
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[kingfisher]

On the boats we sail, the horseshoe is is used for the main sheet (=sheet ring). At the back of the boom there is a free spinning metal plate, with an eye on each side. One is for the uphaul (masthead to end of boom), the other is to attach a small line that goes to the sheet ring, to prevent it sliding up the boom towards the goosneck. BTW, I've seen one snap on a broad reach, and the ring just slammed to 1/3 of the boom. Check regularly.

In the curved part of the sheet ring should be three or more holes. When reefing, do the following:
1)In the first tuck, roll in a towel or cloth. This is to compensate for the fact that sail are not flat, but have a 3D-shape. So you roll in a towel in the "belly" of the sail (about 1/3 of the sail, towards the mast). The older the sail, the bigger the towel.

2) Switch the attachment of the sheet to the horseshoe from the centre hole to one of the side holes, depending on how you plan to turn the boom. If you look from the back of the boom towards the gooseneck, when not reefed, the sail sets in the middle of the boom. When reefed, it is offset to one side. Make sure you put some protection between sheet ring and sail when reefed for chafe.

Kicker? Sorry, don't have one. Boat is gaff rigged

Group of people on the pontoon: skipper is the one with the toolbox.
http://sirocco31.tripod.com

 

[Strathglass]

The horseshoe claw will work.
You slide it to your normal boom kicker position from the end of the boom and roll the sail inside it.
Before you use it you need a line reefing claw and the end of the boom otherwise it will end up at the gooseneck as you tension it. This is all very well if you have a patented rotating fitting at the end of the boom and the line can stay on permanently, otherwise the line will require removal and replacement each time you roll the sail.

An alternative method is to roll a canvas strap up around the boom as you roll the sail up and hook your kicker control line to the free end of it. This is fine if you have a very strong method if locking the boom from un-rotating but it will always impart a strong twisting torque on the boom when in use.

I have tried both methods on an old gunter rigged day boat and while they can be made to work it is virtually impossible to get a good mainsail shape when reefing round the boom.
I eventually added slab reefing points and the shape of the main improved dramatically when reefed. Also, as would be expected, the sailing performance in heavier weather improved significently.

Iain

 

[dickh]

I also had a reefing Claw on my Vivacity 20 years ago - and is set up as described earlier with a line to the mast and one to the end of the boom - parallel to the boom, not fixed to the coachroof - but always a bit of a compromise and the sail never set well when reefed. I converted to slab reefing and it was much better. Try it for the first season and see how you get on with it.

dickh
I'd rather be sailing... /forums/images/icons/smile.gif

 

[seaesta]

I have a similar device on my mainsail. It seems to work better if you use a crew member to pull down on the aft end of the boom, then tighten up the kicking strap and then release the boom end; this overcomes the limited tension capacity without exceesive pulling.

Martin

 

[charles_reed]

Roller reefing was very fashionable in the 60-70s, but soon fell out of favour with the re-emegence of slab-reefs and is now totally replaced by in-mast or in-boom rollers.

Most people I know have modified their roller-reefing booms for jiffy-reefing (slab-reefing).

The provision of a vang was always the big problem - the most effective compromise I saw was the use of an underslung wire, attached on a rotating disc at each end of the boom, to which the vang was attached.
The claw was always most unsatisfactory causing quite a lot of sail-damage when it was tight enough to affect sail-set, but more usually a bloody nuisance when you were trying to reduce sail.

 

[Petercatterall]

Many thanks for the good advice on this. I think that the consensus was that I could use the roller but would probably acheive better results if I converted the sail. I gather that I could ask a sailmaker to sew on the required reefing points?
Again, thanks for your time in responding.