J/30 Class Association Forums J/30 Forum The Boat, Sails and Equipment how to make sail raising easier

I use a main with slugs and have struggled with a home made gate system, but last night installed the factory made gate which dbows shows above. It worked brillantly - many thanks!

Michael
#537

My wife and I sail a lot together and I tried to set up the boat for that and cruising more than racing. I installed a Harken roller furler and put slugs on the main with 2 plates at the mast. Also an tillerpilot, to keep the boat into the wind.The slugs seem to hang up at the upper portion of the plates where it covers the mast on either side. Next I will thicken the plates(so that the interior slot opening is flush with the mast)by spot welding aluminum runners on the inside of the plates. You have to determine the thickness, etc. to make it match. Also, I plan to add a self tailing winch to the cabin top. Now, with the autopilot, my wife at the mast to feed slugs and me winching, we can do it, but I want to eliminate the mast jockey! I'll tell you how the plate fix goes after a trip to the machine shop. sb3031@comcast.net

I have decided to have sailcare add slugs and batten cars to my main. I'm also going to install a sail cradle that can be stowed while sailing and deployed when the i'm ready to douse the main.

I sent my main in to have slugs added. One of the reason that the main was hard to raise is that the bolt rope had shrunk making the luff curved. Usually this is an easy fix, most main have the rope sew at the top and bottom. Releasing one makes it easy to replace. My sail of course had to be different and was sewn completely from top to bottom, adding significant cost to the repair.