Hanked-on seems compelling
Thanks for all the advice, Ben & Ian. After reading your posts I did some searches on "merriman furler" and "flying jibs" and found lots of good discussion on these topics, especially on the WoodenBoat forums (with many great posts by you, Ian.) Based on all the observations I've read in all those posts, I think I'm leaning towards hanked on sails pretty strongly now. Why?
1. While a Merriman or Wykeham-Martin furler would look beautiful on Mimi Rose with all her bronze hardware, I *really* don't like the idea of having to turn upwind to furl a sail off-shore in heavy wind/seas, or worse yet, getting it wrapped around the headstay. That said, if I knew my sailing would be almost exclusively coastal, this type of furling gear would be quite tempting.
2. Being a liveaboard, the stowage requirements for wire luff sails seem too limiting. I need to be able to pack things away tighter than that and stow sails well in the forepeak, easily. I suppose an HM luff might get around this, but see #3.
3. Maybe it's because I don't have much experience with it, but setting jibs flying (with any kind of luff) seems like it would get hard to handle in high wind situations. (Barring furling, of course, but that takes me back to #1.)
4. The more I've thought about foils and their downsides, the more I dislike them. I particularly dislike not being able to inspect the stay beneath easily. As noted, my headstay does sag a good bit, and my presumption is that this would be wildly improved if the weight of the foil were removed. On a related note, Mimi Rose yaws more at anchor than I like, and I imagine that the reduction of forward windage by the elimination of the foil and furled sail would dramatically improve this. (I plan on taking other measures here, too.)
These are my thoughts for how to proceed:
A. Replace the headstay with a simple spliced SS headstay and add a turnbuckle for more tuning control. (There are already turnbuckles on the bobstay and backstay. I may try to eliminate the bobstay turnbuckle as a result.)
B. Add a downhaul that is led to somewhere near the mast and/or port pin rail (i.e., near the jib halyard.) The downhaul would be threaded through hanks and attached to a hank just below the head of the sail.
C. Learn to handle/bag hanked on jibs well per Ian's recommendations in other threads on WB forums, and when needed to use Bernard Moitessier's suggestion of hanking the sail to a line on deck that leads to the bowsprit to ease moving sails to/from deck. In my case, I can use my high life lines for this additional purpose as they lead from the cranse iron and around the shrouds to high on the boom gallows. Hanking sails on them forward of the shrouds while still bagged would seem to make things even easier and safer to take forward with me. Plus I can work out the order of hanks in greater comfort/safety on deck, and go forward to take one sail off (placing it on a life line) and put the other on in one trip.
D. Make the bow sprit as safe as possible. This winter, I'll be painting the top of it with non-skid, but I also plan the installation of a footrope that would allow me to brace my thighs against the bowsprit (my crew is 10 inches shorter than I, so I need to make a height that will work for her, as well.) I will also evaluate and consider the addition of some other athwartships lines running from the footrope to whiskerstays if this seems like a good idea, and/or extra handholds where needed.
I welcome observations and suggestions on these ideas from the many more seasoned (than I) riggers/sailors on here.
Thank you, Colin
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