Mainsail downhaul idea?

[Norman_E]

The thread below on car systems got me thinking about my mainsail, which is fully battened and runs on Rutgerson cars at the battens, with ordinary sliders between. It hauls up OK, and when the halyard is released it drops most of the way, usually leaving the last couple of metres to be pulled down by hand.
Would it work if I fitted a light line to the headboard, down to a block at the mast foot and back to the cockpit, to pull down the last bit of sail without leaving the cockpit. Has anyone tried this?

 

[bbg]

I'm sure it would work if you rigged it right, but you are adding complexity to the system. You'll risk snags.

When you release the halyard the cord will go slack. It could catch around something half way up the mast and tighten up. Then you wouldn't be able to pull the main up or down.

I am sure there are ways to design around the problem I've identified, but again you'd be adding more complexity.

Personally I woulnd't do it.

 

[jstr]

I tried this when I was having problems. Originally I had cars only on the battens and ordinary plastic sliders inbetween.

Basically if it isn't coming down, it's cos it's stuck somewhere, and hauling from the top didn't solve it for us. We replaced the plastic sliders with cars - not cheap but really does the job.

 

[Helina]

Instead of trying to force the sail down I'd recommend:

- clean the mastgroove propely
- add into the groove dry teflon like Sailcote or similar.
- check that the halyard is running freely

The dry teflon works like a miracle !



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[achwilan]

Quite right.
I tried the trick to fit a line to the headboard before that and it didn't work... because when you pull the line, the headboard slider is pushing down the other ones, and jam them...

 

[Poignard]

[ QUOTE ]
The dry teflon works like a miracle !

[/ QUOTE ]

That's true. I was amazed at the difference it made to the ease of hoisting and lowering my mainsail. I had always assumed [wrongly] that plastic slides working in a metal groove wouldn't need a lubricant.

 

[Norman_E]

I wondered if that would happen.
I have tried the dry lube idea, but the problem is that I cannot get it where it needs to go, namely the forward facing metal either side of the slot. This year I will try spraying all of the sail slides before putting them in. I would love to adopt John Strudwick's idea and replace the sliders with cars, but the packed sail is aleady so tall above the boom that it is difficult to do up the sailbag, and cars would add about an inch each to the total height.

 

[dickh]

When this happened to me with ordinary white sliders on a fully battened main, I asked my local sail maker and he fitted new black sliders which worked a treat; as soon as the sail was head to wind, release the halyard and the whole lot immediately fell down!! Before you had to pull the sail all the way down.

 

[JamesS]

A cheap lubricant that always works for me is a gloopy mixture of washing up liquid and water. Use one of those hand spray guns that you buy bathroom cleaner in.

Spray the stuff on sliders and cars and in lower part of the mainsail groove - you can almost hoist the sail by hand and it drops like a dream.

 

[Poignard]

[ QUOTE ]
This year I will try spraying all of the sail slides before putting them in.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's all I did. It didn't need much.