Keeping mast-track slides from sticking

[AntarcticPilot]

When the sailmaker was measuring up for my new mainsail he gave me a little demonstration. Put a slider in the track pull it straight back and slide it up and down. Then pull it to one side and see how much more difficult it is to slide up and down.

Moral: getting the boat head to wind matters!

+1, for at least two reasons!
First of all, it reduces friction between the sliders and the track; you can minimize this and the spray I use is about as good as you can get - it is molybdenum sulphide in a PTFE carrier; it provides a slippery coating on what it is applied to. I hate to think what it would cost to buy; I get time-expired cans from my wife's work! The stuff is designed for use in demanding engineering situations, where both high bearing pressures and heat are likely.

Second, on my rig and many others, raising or lowering the sail when it is not directly behind the mast will result in battens catching on the cross-trees or on the lower shrouds. And if you're not head to wind, slackening the main halliard will result in the sail twisting so the battens catch on the rigging.

Finally, why not? If I'm dropping sail, the engine will be running, so I can easily arrange to motor slowly into the wind. I have a tiller-pilot that makes that easy. Being head to wind makes it much easier to work on deck, so I can flake the sail down on the boom in reasonable conditions, and bundle it up as best as may be in unreasonable ones. I couldn't do either if the sail was drawing.

 

[newtothis]

Finally, why not? If I'm dropping sail, the engine will be running, so I can easily arrange to motor slowly into the wind. I have a tiller-pilot that makes that easy. Being head to wind makes it much easier to work on deck, so I can flake the sail down on the boom in reasonable conditions, and bundle it up as best as may be in unreasonable ones. I couldn't do either if the sail was drawing.

What do Southern Ocean and trade wind sailors do when running down hill and needing to reef/drop sail? Presumably turning into the wind in monstrous seas is not ideal.

 

[DJE]

What do Southern Ocean and trade wind sailors do when running down hill and needing to reef/drop sail? Presumably turning into the wind in monstrous seas is not ideal.

Haul the reef down with a winch I expect. Needs must, etc.

 

[mjcoon]

What do Southern Ocean and trade wind sailors do when running down hill and needing to reef/drop sail? Presumably turning into the wind in monstrous seas is not ideal.

I expect they've got in-mast furling...

 

[rogerthebodger]

Haul the reef down with a winch I expect. Needs must, etc.

Either that of loose the mast overboard.

 

[rotrax]

I'm still gradually sewing my track-sliders on to my luff. If anyone is wondering why it has taken almost a year, I actually finished in August then decided I'd made a mistake, and took them all off. Now I realise that was the mistake, and I'm sewing them back on again.

I worry that the simple plastic sliders aren't exactly the same gauge as the mast-track, so if I tug on the halyard (or on the luff as I haul down the sail) the thrust may come more at an angle, and the slider will defy its name and stick in the track.

Is it enough, to slosh a lot of McLube or other silicone lubricant on the sliders before inserting them into the track? Is it effective to squirt silicone into the track itself, or does it lube its way down the track under gravity and disperse?

Two points which might help.

In Alec Roses book 'My Lively Lady' he has reoccuring issues with the webbing links sewn to his sail slides. He also found them time conuming to repair or redo.

IIRC while in New Zealand he was advised to use very small S/S shackles. He so did, and never had another failure.
I had similar issue with our Gibsea 96. Changed to shackles, never had another problem bar UV-ed plastic sail slides or the odd broken one, but NEVER the shackle.

We keep a steel Hartley 32 in Wellington, NZ. The sail was sticky, both up and down. Close inspection and careful measurement of the track and slides showed that three different types of slide were present, black ones, thick at the track and two sorts of white ones of subtly different dimension. All showed severe wear.

Playing around showed unworn black ones to have less friction. A supply was sourced from Auckland, fitted with new S/S shackles, now as good as I could ever expect.

It might be worth changing to shackles plus fitting new slides of the correct dimension. The severe wear I found in NZ was to a top corner and the opposite bottom corner. This showed twisting movement in use or while hoisting/lowering.

My two pennyworth anyway.

 

[Greenheart]

Thanks for that, I was quite keen to put eyelets in my luff, and use shackles as you describe. Then it occurred to me that cutting at least a dozen 2/5ths of an inch holes in my ancient luff might not do its strength any good, although possibly no worse than all the stitch holes I have put in it by avoiding using eyelets.

We shall see...going to try a hoist today. Maybe.

 

[coveman]

I know this is an old thread but I notice WD40 now manufacture a silicon based spray that is quick drying. It would appear to be very similar to the Harken product, but at a fraction of the price. Has anyone tried it? Silicone Lubricant

 

[mainsail1]

Yes, I have a can onboard and it works well.

 

[Greenheart]

I bought the WD40 spray recently as a damp preventative measure on a new cast iron vice for the bench in the garage (I put grease on the screw, of course), and for general bicycle/door hinge purposes.

I didn't realise it was equally suitable for marine purposes. I had allowed myself to suppose that there's something special about products like the hugely costly McLube, and less extortionate Holt equivalent, which makes them the only thing suitable for grease-free lubrication.

Cripes, I just noticed I started this thread, two years ago. I've been so busy, I only managed to hoist the sail with the sliders on, this spring.

Actually my original question concerned the mast-track of my Achilles 24, now gone, which was a larger diameter than that of the Osprey.

When I sewed sliders on the Osprey's mainsail, I discovered that the 3mm-thick 'neck' between the round barrel-part of the slider and the luff-attachment, fitted in the track fine up to the hounds, but stuck fast in the very flexible top section.

All I could do was trim down the thickness of the 'neck' by a millimetre, hoping that the slenderness of the sail at that height exerts less tug and won't simply rip the sail off the mast. And, I used plenty of silicone lube, obviously.

On the formulation question of WD40 versus costly equivalents, is WD equally suitable for spraying on spinnakers which must exit and enter a narrow chute mouth? Or is that an area where only McLube and specialised products with a yachting mark-up, will do?

 

[mrming]

There is WD-40 lubricant spray which is a silicone spray (similar in intention to McLube etc) and then original WD-40 which is not a lubricant at all, but a “water displacer” (hence the WD). There’s also a WD-40 PTFE lubricant. I would imagine the latter is okay for spinnaker chutes but there’s not much evidence of people using it for that yet so perhaps proceed with caution. ?