Roller reefing and easy jacks on a Squib

[Greenheart]

I'm sure that's right LW...but I doubt Barton specified their smallest furler only for dinghies, where the jib is most often freed in gusts, relieving the gear of higher stresses. If Barton doesn't particularise, it's fair to assume it can perform the same role on a keelboat.

On the water, the Osprey's forestay is the genoa boltrope held up by the halyard, so the furler and swivel-bearings take the whole load of the rig including stresses induced by the mainsheet, hard on the wind. As far as I can see from photos, the Squib's headsail furler (if fitted) doesn't bear all the rig loads - a separate headstay does that. Or does it have another purpose?

 

[Kukri]

We tried a furler and abandoned it because if you got the forestay tensioned, the jib luff sagged away by several inches, and if you got the jib halyard tensioned, you rolled the forestay into the sail. So we saved up and bought the Plastimo gear and the forestay now sits in the middle of the tube.

We have to report that using the slugs was a mistake - they break.

 

[Daydream believer]

Why on earth are you messing about with all these modifications.
They just are not needed. Just learn to sail the boat & after a couple of days you will not need them. Do not mess about with reefs either. If you need reefs do not go out.

I have a squib & never find any problem with the standard rig. Picking up a mooring whether 1 or 2 up, is simple in such a small boat.
Just get in the boat & sail it.

One piece of advice though!
Check that the buoyancy tanks are properly sealed. Squibs do go over. In a squall a couple of years ago, one of ours at Stone SC tipped filled with water & sank. (they have sunk some at Burnham I believe). The owner could hear the air coming out of the tanks as she went down, never to be seen again!!!
I was not sailing mine at the time, but the crew says that it was a surprise gust & if the spinnaker cleat had not slipped when it did they would certainly have been in trouble.
The latest Squibs have self draining cockpits

 

[Greenheart]

Do not mess about with reefs. If you need reefs do not go out.

If I hadn't allowed myself the option of reducing sail area, I'd almost never go sailing. Reefing is a thoroughly seamanlike response when conditions make the full sail area too demanding. The OP seems to be new to the class, so it's reasonable he may want to downsize the experience a little when it's gusty.

Why on earth are you messing about with all these modifications. They just are not needed.

:biggrin-new: Does your car have to be double-declutched on every gearshift, by any chance, Daydream? The conventional method can often be very involving when sailing, but if it's too much bother, thank heavens there are alternative options.

I recall a lot of this kind of dismissiveness of modifications when I was proposing ways of controlling the Osprey. It boiled down to the fact that nobody could accept me wanting to sail a two-man dinghy, alone...so a lot of different boats were suggested instead. :hopeless:

Home-made lazyjacks mean my mainsail is rapidly doused and contained, out of the way overhead. My cheap roller-furling genoa is like an automatic gearbox. Arriving at the slipway in a breeze, the boat goes from being a vast noisy monster that defies control, to a steady, silent hull that sits inertly in the breakers while I go for the trolley.

No other dinghies at my club use these bother-eliminating modifications, but nobody else singlehands a big boat. I can see why, because when rigged as originally designed (many decades ago), their simplicity requires more hands than one man can spare. Making them more manageable involves fitting ways to ensure one job can be finished very fast, when another needs urgent attendance.

Two-handers arrive back at the beach in a breeze, their crews bawling at each other for several minutes while their boat swings noisily in the breakers, held at the forestay. I guess the unwholesome mess of dropping the main at sea, is the reason they wait. But waiting with the boat pitching and rolling, sails still raised, is the kind of arduous inconvenience that would stop me going out.

Getting the sails down (properly down, not flogging and flapping, still driving the boat or filling the foredeck and cockpit) turns a racing boat into a much calmer place to be.

 

[Daydream believer]

Dan I do not think that one should use your idea of a bodge dinghy as an example.
The Op is talking about a Squib , presumably leaving a pontoon or a mooring. Not trying to launch something not being used for a job for which it was never designed.
Squibs have main sheets that can be played. They have rig & sail controls that trim the sails. One does not have to bodge bits to sail them properly.
Am I wrong in that last comment?
You are not sailing your Osprey properly, or as it was designed to be sailed. (Am i wrong in that comment?) You are just playing about experimenting to see if you can make it go.( Am I wrong in that comment?) If you were serious about sailing properly you would get a proper dinghy suited to the sailing you wanted to do. You keep talking about it. (am I wrong in that comment?) but really have no real idea what you want. (you have sort of indirectly admitted it often enough) So I suggest that perhaps you should not try to influence the OP.

 

[Greenheart]

Daydream, I only sail for my enjoyment. I use what other people's cleverness has invented to make my big dinghy more manageable, and I explore all the pleasing compromises which the racing scene doesn't allow itself to consider, even if it eventually adopts them. It doesn't influence me if other people's views are narrower about which boat I could or should sail, without recourse to that equipment.

I could now own any of the little boats you think would suit me, but I really don't want them. Why would I be bothered if, in your words, I'm not sailing the Osprey "properly"? I've a broad sense of what else is possible, and far more importantly, what's fun.

None of that is material here, except you have helped me plenty before, but in respect of the OP's question, I believe you're being blinkered about what other folk recognise as preferable modifications to unevolved original sail handling gear. The roller-furler on a Squib looks great. I wouldn't persist with my boat if I had to visit the foredeck just to tidy away the jib. Why should the OP?

 

[Red Europa]

Thanks for the update about the slugs breaking Minn.

 

[PeteCooper]

We have to report that using the slugs was a mistake - they break.

That's interesting. On my previous boat, an Ecume De Mer, the genoa had plastic slugs onto a Plastimo foil and nothing broke in the 12+ years that I had her. I wonder if mine had bigger slugs than you used?

 

[Kukri]

Thanks for the update about the slugs breaking Minn.

Will report further on this tomorrow. We want to use them on the mainsail as well.

In response to Daydream Believer:

We agree that the Squib is a very easy boat to sail, at a basic level. That’s why we bought her.

All this non-standard rig tweaking on the Squib is because she is used as a dayboat and a camping cruiser, for which it must be possible to singlehand her easily, and to reef her. To revert to “proper” racing rig we would just buy a new suit of sails and drop the Plastimo roller off the forestay. Oh and leave the CQR, the stove, the water breakers and the tent in the dinghy, on the mooring... But we have a family tradition going back to 1919 of singlehanded camping cruising in half decked boats of this size on the East Coast.

 

[Daesal]

"fitted the smallest Barton drum and swivel for my Osprey's 50sq ft jib, and it has always sufficed in every way. The Squib's total upwind sail area is only 17sq ft more than the Osprey's; most of that increase is likely to be in the mainsail, so it seems unlikely that the same Barton furler would be undersized for squib"

Thanks for that info. The squib jib definatly seems less than 60%.
Would there be any technical disadvantage to using the larger roller drum? Just to be sure. Possibly it might rub on the forestay?

 

[Daesal]

Thanks for the helpful info.Yes . It seems strange that can't find individual sail areas. The squib jib definatly seems smaller than 60%. The total sail area of the squib is 29m2.Would there be any technical disadvantage in going for the bigger drum? Just to be on the safe side .

 

[Kukri]

We splashed out on the Plastimo roller reefing set up because (a) we wanted to reef the jib and (b) we couldn’t get the simple furler to work well enough.

 

[Greenheart]

Would there be any technical disadvantage in going for the bigger drum? Just to be on the safe side.

The design of the bigger Barton drum looks the same (aside from radius and slight weight increase, I expect), so I doubt there's any difference although its proximity to the outer stay needs checking. Some people fit a disk (at the top swivel) to force a space between the sail's luff and the outer stay; if the stay is saggy when the jib's luff is tight, the stay can get caught as the sail is rolled away.

You've probably found the webpage on Squib roller-furlers; the photo there (and below) shows that the forestay is adjustable, so shouldn't cause that tangle issue. I don't know if that arrangement is part of the standard Squib set-up, or a clever solution by this owner.

It should be remembered that the Barton furler is intended for rolling the jib away entirely, not for reducing its area as a roller-reefing system does. I think that's what Mr Minn's Plastimo furler (and similar systems by companies like Profurl) can do - they provide a substantial plastic spar which revolves, rather than just turning the sail's luff-wire.

I tried half-rolling my genoa on a gusty day in September, and it wasn't as bad as I'd expected, though the coiled sail drew very tight and the unfurled area increased in gusts, so it's not a reefing solution to depend upon at the sort of times it's likely to matter. But for enabling silent, effortless, tidy removal of the jib in seconds, the cheap Barton system is hard to beat.

 

[Kukri]

Belated update: the slugs don’t break but the sail attachments were not man enough to cope with sailing with the much straighter luff created by the aluminium Plastimo roller spar. Having sewn the lugs on properly we are very happy indeed with the set up, and would not go back to hanked on or simple roller furling.