Adding a stack pack / eliminating the roller furling boom

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gabriel.donnelly
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Nov 25, 2015 6:00 pm

Adding a stack pack / eliminating the roller furling boom

Post by gabriel.donnelly »

So i'm contemplating the addition of a stack pack and lazy jacks to the rig but there's a few things i need to work out... my main has no "slides" so it'll have to go to the sail shop and have them installed ( and a couple reef points ) There's also the matter of the crank handle on mast forward should I just bolt thru the mast to hold it? Also there is the locations for the top of the lazy jacks on the mast ... If anyone has done this install i'd love to hear your method maybe even some pics. Thanks!
Bob McGovern
Posts: 283
Joined: Fri Oct 26, 2012 3:08 am
Location: Wyoming, USA

Re: Adding a stack pack / eliminating the roller furling boom

Post by Bob McGovern »

Hi Gabriel. Roller furling booms have gone out of fashion as better Jiffy Reefing options came into use. Slides are easy to put on a sail (either at home or by a sail shop) and should probably space about 27" apart on the Ballad. Our mast has a very large flare in the mast slot just above the boom, and we will need to make a filler or mast gate to keep the slugs from spilling out.

So you have the roller furling boom with the crank thru the front of the mast? (our crank socket is behind the gooseneck, on the boom fitting itself.) I wouldn't want to drill thru the sides of the mast at that point, just because it sees tremendous bending and thrust forces. What if you made a T-shaped 'stub' handle that fit the crank socket but had ears you could rivet or screw to the mast front? So it would be like a short handle that was left in place but couldn't rotate because it was attached to the mast? There may be some other elegant way of disabling or pinning the mechanism. Could you attach a more conventional gooseneck fitting to the mast? That is our plan, to buy one or have it fabricated.

Image

The previous owner put Harken lazy jacks on our mast. The upper tangs attach 6' below the cap shrouds and 9+ feet above the spreaders. A fixed length of 3/16" coated wire attaches to these, with a Harken Bullet block at the bottom, maybe 8' above the boom. Then the owners used a single triangle of thin nylon parachute cord for the jacks, tied to an eyestrap near the boom's midpoint and passing thru a cheek block to a horn cleat near the front of the boom. They kept their halyards at the mast, so I guess it made sense to tension the lazy jacks from the front. We intend single line reefing with lines led to the cockpit, so we will need a topping lift or lazy jacks you can adjust from aft. This is a diagram of how the lazy jacks are rigged now:

Imagelj by Robert Mcgovern, on Flickr

The mainsail foot is so short, you really only need one triangle in your lazy jacks -- although maybe a stack pack will require more, to keep it from flapping?
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