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Mainsail Lacing Question


Dave R1

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Saturday, I started to bend the mainsail on Julie K I used marline hitching along the gaff and boom which works fine. I still need to mount cleats for the outhauls but needed the sail on to figure out where to put them.

When I got to the luff lacing I did a spiral lacing but don't really care for it. It might be because I didn't get finished setting it up before the sweat was burning in my eyes so bad I could hardly see. I'm wondering about the "forth and back" lacing shown in John Leather's "The Gaff Rig Handbook" and whether or not anyone has used it.

JL_lace.jpg

The plan for this winter is to make wooden hoops but in the interest of saving time now so I can launch in less than a month, lacing seems like the way to go.

Any thoughts?

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absent hoops, the "back and forth" technique is the time honored way of bending on a sail. The old timers did it that way it seems, probably for the reason that it worked well.

By the way, in "Hand Reef and Steer" Cunliffe recommends a simple spiral lacing on the gaff and boom, for the reason that it "is self adjusting so each eye takes an equal portion of the load". He also says that it has a disadvantage in that it's prone to chafe. The final recommendation is for "robands" which are individual ties at each lacing eye on boom and gaff.

Your choice I suppose :)

Whatever you do, just do it and get the thing sailing :D

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