Topping lift

PabloPicasso

PabloPicasso

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When you sail what do you do with the topping lift? Leave it attached to the boom with a little slack, tie it off to the mast or elsewhere, something else?
 
Get a rod kicker and throw the topping lift away.... Haven't sailed with a topping lift, racing or cruising, for well over a decade now, simply not necessary.

If you don't have a rod kicker yet, then Slowboat's answer is the way forward until you see the light.
 
flaming said:
Get a rod kicker and throw the topping lift away.... Haven't sailed with a topping lift, racing or cruising, for well over a decade now, simply not necessary.

If you don't have a rod kicker yet, then Slowboat's answer is the way forward until you see the light.
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On school yachts, a rope kicker and topping lift can be used to great effect when showing peeps how to sail slow, such as anchoring under sail and scandalising the main. However for the vast majority....
Apart from that, yeah rod is good and less concern about a forgotten lift dropping the boom.
 
capnsensible said:
On school yachts, a rope kicker and topping lift can be used to great effect when showing peeps how to sail slow, such as anchoring under sail and scandalising the main. However for the vast majority....
Apart from that, yeah rod is good and less concern about a forgotten lift dropping the boom.
Click to expand...
This feels like groundhog day, but with a fully battened main as now popular on cruising boats, dumping a couple of feet of halyard is easier to take the tension out of the battens, and more effective than traditional scandalising.
 
On small boats I have had where the weight of the boom is not great I avoided the hassle of slackening or tightening by just unclipping it and clipping it onto the backstay. I used to have a loop of soft line on the backstay for just that pupose.
 
I’m in favour of doing as little work as possible when sailing and see no reason to do anything with mine. The boom usually rests on the strut when not sailing, leaving the TL a bit slack. I generally let it roughly follow the same curve as the sail’s leach. To have it at the mast would be to generate yet another source of noise.
 
While I agree that they aren't necessary, rod kickers can and do fail, and it's a handy place to keep a spare halyard so mine will remain in place and a little loose
 
One point relevant mainly to cruisers.

If you are motoring - to windward is worst - in heavy sea, with a wet heavy main lying on the boom in its stackpack, the loads transferred to a strut as the boat rolls can easily exceed its design envelope.

A breakage could have catastrophic consequences for those sitting in the cockpit.

Also, whichever way one goes, it's worth retaining the topping lift and speccing it to act as a spare main halyard as well as safety line for when climbing the mast.
 
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We run without a topping lift. We have a rod kicker with twin gas springs giving 200Kg of lift. One advantage is we don't have to remember to release it when hoisting the main.
 
dom said:
One point relevant mainly to cruisers.

If you are motoring - to windward is worst - in heavy sea, with a wet heavy main lying on the boom in its stackpack, the loads transferred to a strut as the boat rolls can easily exceed its design envelope.

A breakage could have catastrophic consequences for those sitting in the cockpit.

Also, whichever way one goes, it's worth retaining the topping lift and speccing it to act as a spare main halyard as well as safety line for when climbing the mast.
Click to expand...

Sure, but if the main's down, then you can put the halyard on the end of the boom and use that to take the weight (and take some of the bounce out).
 
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