Hoisting and lowering the mainsail: troubleshooting problems

Earlier this year, I was sailing with a friend on a boat he was thinking of buying.

On the way back in, as you do, we put the sails away: we rolled away the headsails (it was a cutter) and lowered the mainsail and mizzen (it was also a ketch).  At least, we tried to lower the mizzen.

Motoring directly into a gentle breeze, we released the halyard and the head came down a couple of feet. Then it stopped.

The sail was tiny; barely larger than that of a small dinghy.

It had little roach and was fitted with ordinary plastic slides – only they didn’t want to slide, even when I stood on top of the wheelhouse and pulled down on the luff.

There was only one quick answer: I had to shin up the mast, stand on the spreaders, reach up and work the slides down.

A few weeks later I had to go up to the hounds on a 12m (40ft) performance cruiser because the roller-reefing headsail had jammed halfway in.

It was a straightforward temporary fix with a lashing – ‘straightforward’ being a relative term when you’re bouncing around up there – but twice in half a season for that sort of thing is unusual.

It makes you think about what you would do in situations when you’re not able to go aloft.

Returning to our ketch, shinning up the mizzen under any circumstances would not have been an option for the prospective owner or his wife.

Being stuck with a sail that won’t come down is potentially dangerous.

And the mainsail on this boat wasn’t much better: it only dropped about halfway on its own.

Significantly, both sails had gone up without too much grunt but, as is often the case with mainsails (or other sails hoisted up a groove in the back of a mast), what goes up doesn’t always come down quite so readily.

You’re working against gravity one way and friction the other.

Sometimes on the hoist, you’re fighting both gravity and friction.

And on the drop, as we’ve seen, friction can all too readily overcome gravity.

That the sails on some boats don’t go up and down quickly and easily is something that owners often learn to live with: they just winch a bit harder on the way up, pull a bit harder on the way down, or learn to compensate somehow.

That’s OK most of the time, but work-arounds are not really the answer.

More often than not, you’re hoisting and lowering sails in confined waters with other boats around and plenty of distractions too.

That’s when you really don’t need any snags.

How the mainsail works

In principle, it all sounds simple enough. The mast-maker makes the mast with a groove in the back.

The sailmaker puts slides on the sail that fi t in the groove, and away you go.

In the case of a wooden mast, the track is fitted to the back.

One problem is the number of different sections of luff groove. If you buy a new European production cruiser in the UK, chances are it will have a mast made by Seldén, Z Spars or Sparcraft, though there are others.

They all have different grooves so, if you’re buying a new sail for a secondhand boat, you need to make sure the sailmaker fits the right slides.

If he doesn’t, keep a monkey on board or have the bosun’s chair at the ready.

The worrying thing is that even new or nearly-new boats can have problems if the sailmaker and spar-maker either haven’t spoken to each other or if the builder has asked the sailmaker for the cheapest possible set of sails (yes, it happens) and they’re fitted with hardware that’s not up to the job.

The ketch with the troublesome mizzen was only a few years old and had hardly been sailed.

When I asked the sailmaker, he replied that it had all worked when he fitted the sails, though many aspects of the sails and sail-handling systems were a complete dog’s breakfast.

If you’re ordering a new sail, whether for a new(ish) boat or an older one, the sailmaker will need to know the make and the age of the mast.

Well-established lofts run by people who have been in the business for a long time will probably recognise most mast sections from a photograph.

Some have copies of spar-makers’ literature and technical drawings going back decades, which can be invaluable.

If you’re dealing with a new kid on the block who takes the order and gets the sails made on the far side of the world, you will want to satisfy yourself before parting with any money.

Mainsail troubleshooting: Sliding and rolling

So far we have talked about ‘slides’ in general terms. In practice, the parts that slide up and down the mast range from simple plastic slugs with no moving parts, as typically found on short-batten sails and between the battens on fully battened sails, via the long-established Rutgerson roller slides to cars with ball bearings that run on external tracks.

These are designed to take the compressive loads of large mainsails with full-length battens and lots of roach.

The type of slides or cars you have on your sail will depend on its size, the roach and the number of battens, among other factors.

You should discuss this with your sailmaker.

Especially with full-length battens, the linkage between the slider/car and the luff of the sail is also important, both to ensure that the luff is kept the right distance from the mast in between the battens and that compression when the sail is being lowered doesn’t cause jams – which it often does.

With fully-battened sails becoming increasingly popular, choosing the appropriate hardware is vital.

But bear in mind that cars that will fit the mast won’t necessarily fit through the gate at the bottom of the luff groove.

The gate might have to be changed.

You will probably also need to have mast-gate surgery if changing from a mainsail with a bolt-rope, which calls for a luff-feeder and a simple entry to the groove some way up the mast, to a sail with slides.

Mainsail troubleshooting. Overcoming friction: the hoist

Check your slides

If they’re the wrong ones or simply not up to spec, you’re fighting a losing battle.

Clean the luff groove

An accumulation of dirt and debris will increase friction. Clean the groove with a cloth and soapy water.

Crusader Sails suggests feeding a knotted J Cloth into the groove through the gate.

Attach a halyard, not forgetting a downhaul too, and run it up and down.

It’s probably best not to follow up the cleaning by using lubricants.

With the right slides/cars and a clean luff groove, they shouldn’t be necessary and can simply attract more dirt.

Check your masthead sheave

If the rig was designed for a wire halyard, the masthead sheave will probably be aluminium on a stainless steel pin.

Over the years the reaction between the two metals will quite possibly jam the sheave.

Changing the sheave will usually mean lowering the mast.

Old Tufnol sheaves often keep working longer.

A halyard can also jam after coming off a sheave.

Hoist at the mast

For the past few decades, it has become the norm for halyards to be led aft so they can be handled from the cockpit.

This means the halyard goes from the head of the sail, around the masthead sheave, back down and out of the mast, through a block on deck, probably through a deck organiser and then back to a clutch on the aft end of the coachroof.

The 180° turn around the masthead sheave is unavoidable, but the additional turns necessary to lead a halyard aft will inevitably add friction.

As Paul Lees of Crusader points out, friction throughout the path of the halyard isn’t just cumulative; it multiplies in the same way that a purchase does.

So three friction points plus another three mean you’re working against a friction factor of nine, not six.

Racing crews jump halyards at the mast for many reasons, usually with someone else tailing in the cockpit.

While some cruising folk might baulk at the idea of adopting what they see as racing practice, this method has much in its favour if you have two
people aboard.

As long as the halyard’s exit sheave on the mast is above head-height, one of the crew sweats the halyard while the other takes up the slack through the clutch.

If you have never tried it this way, you might be surprised how much easier it is.

Should the halyard’s exit sheave be at deck level, however, this isn’t going to work.

It might be worth having it moved.

Even if you’re single-handed, you can hoist at the mast through a clutch, then close the clutch and take up the tail from the cockpit.

Check your hardware

If you habitually hoist from the cockpit, it’s worth making sure that friction between the halyard’s exit sheave and the winch is minimised by replacing any blocks and organisers that are old and tired.

New ball-bearing blocks will make a vast difference – and they will help on the drop too.

Check your halyard

Ropes become harder and stiffer through exposure to dirt, salt, UV light and being under tension over the years.

That means they won’t turn corners so freely and will also be harder to handle.

Check your winches

If you’re still having problems hoisting from the cockpit, think about the winching.

Working under a sprayhood can make it awkward to swing a winch handle efficiently. Has the halyard winch been serviced recently?

Do you have space for a longer handle? Would a self-tailer help? (Almost certainly, for a price.) Do you simply need the power of a bigger winch?

Would an electric winch be the answer? Or how about an electric winch handle, such as the one made by WinchRite?

Electric halyard winches need to be treated with caution: pulling the headboard out of the mainsail is not a good idea.

Do not pull the slack out of your reefing pennants!

Do not pull reefing pennants through the boom to take up the slack once the sail is stowed.

Leave them loose and just tuck them inside the sail. If you pull them through, you have all that friction to work against when next hoisting the
sail, especially with an endless or single-line system.

The casting at the end of the boom, and the sheaves that it houses for the outhaul and reefing pennants, are often too narrow for the diameter of the line anyway.

Don’t make life harder for yourself.

Fit a 2:1 halyard

Some boats with large, heavily roached, fully-battened sails use 2:1 halyards. The purchase reduces the load and, therefore, the stretch on the halyard (which can be of smaller diameter).

There’s less load on the clutch too.

Hoisting will take up to twice as long and you will need a much longer halyard, so 2:1 systems are not widely used on smaller cruising yachts; nor should they be necessary.

The potential perils of adding power

If your mainsail is hard to hoist, look first at ways of reducing friction.

Increasing hoisting power to overcome avoidable friction is not the best solution.

When the skipper of one large yacht applied the power of its hydraulics to hoist a recalcitrant mainsail, the masthead sheave and pin came down from aloft like a missile.

They took a chunk out of the deck and would have killed anyone standing in their way.

Overcoming friction: the drop

Most of the steps you take to reduce friction on the hoist will also help on the drop.

But when the halyard is released rather than pulling the sail up, different factors come into play.

The luff tends to be pushed into the back of the mast, for example, particularly with full-length battens, so the type of cars/slides and the attachment between them and the batten box become critical.

Fitting a downhaul line attached to the head can help, especially if you find yourself in a situation where you have to pull the sail down with the wind abaft the beam, for example.

One fundamental point is to ensure the halyard is totally free to run.

Once a sail starts to come down, make it easy for it to gather momentum and drop all the way.

The smoothest solutions

A conventional short-batten sail might be fine with ordinary plastic slides. Or, depending on its size and other factors, it might not.

That’s where a different system can bring about a transformation.

Here are some examples.

Seldén MDS and OWS cars

Some time ago now, Seldén changed their mast sections, increasing the chord (fore-and-aft measurement) and, at the same time, modifying the luff groove to accommodate a new type of car: the MDS (multi-directional support).

It has six wheels, all inside the luff groove, the idea being that they will continue to run smoothly from whatever direction the load is coming from.

Before the MDS, the OWS (outer wheel sliders) cars had four wheels running on the aft face of the mast.

External tracks and cars

Harken, Ronstan and Facnor supply ball-bearing cars that run on tracks bolted to the back of the mast.

These are well-established and a good way to minimise friction, but they add weight and are not cheap.

Tides Marine

Despite having been around for over 20 years, Tides Marine’s SailTrack system has remained a remarkably well-kept secret.

I only came across it when Jim Macgregor was fitting it to his Elan 40 as part of his racer-to-cruiser conversion.

I then suggested that the owner of the ketch mentioned at the start of this article fit it for both mainsail and mizzen.

Essentially it’s a plastic track, supplied in one length, that simply slides up the luff groove.

It’s a fraction of the weight and cost of an external track and quicker and easier to fit, especially as the whole job can be completed from deck level.

Stainless steel slides run up and down the track, with no moving parts involved.

A conventional external track-and car system might work with larger mainsails, but I heard recently of a Tides Marine system being used successfully on a 14m (47ft) Dazcat, so it will certainly cater for most people.

PBO conclusion

If you’re having a new sail made, ask what hardware your sailmaker recommends and why.

If your existing sail is giving you grief, looking at the points raised in this feature should help. Or perhaps your halyards are crossed inside the mast.

Some of the solutions will cost you a J Cloth and a squirt of soap.

Others will cost a little more, but quite possibly less than you might imagine.

As we’re dealing with sailing boats, it could be argued that the ability to set and strike your canvas quickly and efficiently is fundamental for convenience, comfort and safety.

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