How are stack packs attatched to the boom?

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firstascent2002

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Hi there,

My Main Sail currently just has a bolt rope so when the sail comes down there is nothing to hold the luff to the mast and the sail is only attatched to the boom and thus tries to exit overboard.

I want to sew a stack pack system to try and restrain it as it comes down. The canvas work is no problem but I find that I don't know how to attatch the thing to the boom!. As each side will be 2 layers of cnavas I think it will be too thick to sit in the boom grove along with the main sail. I could make it in 2 parts and rivit the bottom or each of them along the boom...surely there must be a standard way! Any thoughts gratefully recived. (or other thoughts on how to manage a bolt rope main sail. I can't convert it as the track for slides does not start until 2 feet above the boom)

Kind regards

Jamie
 
The way ours works and we've seen others is to join the two sides of canvas with a thinner piece of sail cloth. This slides into the boom groove and then sits neatly under the bolt rope. Works for us. I hope this is reasonably clear.
 
The Dehler system on my 22 is attached with studs. I think most of the retro-fit kits use the boom track, and I too had wondered how you get it all to fit.

Tim
 
Others have described the way the sail bag is held on.

You also need a couple of lines coming from the sail bag going upwards to attach to the mast. Thus when lowering the sail it is sort of held captive by these lines and guided into the bag. Ish!

This is kind of helpful!!!

But the downside is when hoisting the main you have got to be heading exactly into the wind to allow the battens to get up through this fairly narrow slot.

Not always good for married life as the missus is usually desperatly trying to keep the boat heading into the wind!

Hoisting the sail at night becomes quite tricky as you cannot see it very clearly.

On my Halcyon27, she did not have a sail bag, stack pack, and I managed well.

On the Sadler, she has the stack pack / sail bag.

All in all I think its worth having, but only just. I guess the bigger the sail the more useful it is. But also something else to go wrong.

IMHO
 
If the stack pack and sail share a bolt rope, dragging the stack pack and sail down the boom together is a pain in the proverbial. An alternative is to make the sail loose-footed, then the bolt rope serves only the stack pack.

Battens snagging on lazy jacks:
1. Trim the ends off the battens if they protrude at all.
2. Make the lazy jack lines sufficiently long that the jacks can be pulled to the boom, then there's nothing to snag. Most of the time you won't need to do this, but it's particularly handy at night when it's difficult to see/anticipate snags.
 
[ QUOTE ]
If the stack pack and sail share a bolt rope, dragging the stack pack and sail down the boom together is a pain in the proverbial. An alternative is to make the sail loose-footed, then the bolt rope serves only the stack pack.

[/ QUOTE ]

this is how our setup works. Bolt rope on the stack pack & loose footed main.
 
Look in PBO. No480 December2006. page 67. and there is a good idea to bag up your sail as it comes down. I made two for my Explorer day boat (two masts) and it works very well. No more sail blowing all over the deck in a strong wind and easy to hoist staight out of the bag. Bag just hooked on at each end.
 
[ QUOTE ]
But the downside is when hoisting the main you have got to be heading exactly into the wind to allow the battens to get up through this fairly narrow slot.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not exactly - you can loosen the mainsheet to allow the boom to swing - then you can hoist in anything up to around 45degrees off the wind ...

if your sail gets stuck in the lines, then put the lines on a clip and move them to the gooseneck during the hoist ...
 
I recently installed a MacPack stack pack. They have four or five web straps along the bottom of each side that have snaps to connect them together. The way you attach the snaps together is to burn slots in the bolt rope with a hot knife. I didn't have a hot knife so I used a soldering gun and it worked fine. I was a little apprehensive about doing this but it actually proved to be fairly easy.
 
I actually managed

to do just that with my first attempt at a stackpack, but it wasn't terribly successful.
I sewed the stackpack round the mainsail foot bolt rope and the lot fitted - just. The main was fully battened and they're almost impossible to control without a lazyjack/stackpack combination.


My current main is loose-footed so the problem doesn't arise.

Unfortunately a non-battened main needs far more foot movement to get it setting right (fully battened mains are cut much flatter at the foot) that the added friction, caused by the 2 thicknesses of cloth round the boltrope, makes adjustment a chancy business.
 
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