Sails

Mainsail: Kemp Sails Powermain 

Performance Cruise Mainsail in Bainbridge International woven Dacron, cross-cut and loose-footed with two rows of reefs and 4×75% Powerflex Tapered Battens, Leech line, reefing spectacles and draft stripes.  [Cost in Feb 2005 £985]

The Powermain with its almost full-length (75%) battens is supposed to provide many of the benefits of a fully battened mainsail without needing batten cars at the mast (since they don’t tend to work very well on old masts and we bought the sail before we replaced the mast.

The mainsail is housed in a Kemp Packaway Cover made of u/v stabilised acrylic canvas  with reinforced bottom exits for reefing pennants,  full length fibreglass battens, top zip and provision for 3 lazyjacks.

We declined the offer of a Lazyjack kit from Kemp with the Packaway (at a cost of about £85) as commercial kits seem far too elaborate.  They tend to come with a pair of cheek blocks to mount each side of the mast and blocks for the junctions between the lazyjacks. The Barton system even uses nylon-covered stainless steel wire for the jacks themselves which seems way over the top.

Lottie has two nylon fairleads each side of the mast about halfway between the crosstrees and the top of the mast.  A piece of 5mm cord runs up each side of the mast from a cleat, through the fairlead and down towards the boom where it ends in a loop.  Another piece of string goes through this loop and terminates on the forward attachment on the Packaway. The  aftward end of this string also has a loop with a third piece of string through it, each end of which is made fast to the second and third attachment loop on the Packaway.  Its more difficult to describe than to do.

To get it all set up we started with knotted loops and tidied them up with whipping and heatshrink tubing when satisfied with the layout.   It can all be slackened off at the cleats on the mast if necessary.  Nylon hooks to attach the lazyjacks to the Packaway instead  of knots allow us to unship the jacks when we want the boom tent over the boom.

Roller-furling genoa by Kemp Sails:

145% overlap cross-cut Coastal/Super Cruise specification in Bainbridge International 555 Ocean Dacron with white UV strips on leech and foot. [Cost in Jan 2004 £343 – ordered at London Boat Show]

This sail replaced a Kemp No 1 Hank-On Genoa Coastal specification in 5.0 US oz Bermuda Dacron [ purchased by previous owner in Aug 2001 for £392]  which I sold to a TOA member in near perfect condition.

Lottie has the Facnor SD100 headsail reefing system.

Spinnaker: 

Unknown make, design and size.  It’s orange! Ashamed to say we have never yet flown it.  

Lottie has a spinnaker pole and a lighter whisker pole (see picture above)  to boom out the genoa when goosewinged in light weather.  The spinnaker pole came with the boat and stows at the starboard bow by clipping onto the shroud chainplate aft and to a stainless ring attached with nylon ties to the pulpit forward:

The whisker pole was made from a length of 32mm aluminium anodized tubing (with 28mm internal diameter).  Initially this was fitted with a pair of nylon pole ends to suit the 28mm internal diameter bought for a couple of pounds off e-bay.  Unfortunately they proved too small for Lottie‘s 14mm genoa sheets.  In the picture of the pole’s first outing above,  I have had to use a loop of cord to attach the pole to the genoa.

The nylon pole ends have now been replaced with stainless steel ones which would have cost £70 a pair had I not had some in my box of odds and ends.  I had originally rejected them as they were designed to wrap round a 25mm spar.  But I managed to fit them inside the 32mm tube (see below), securing to the fixing holes through the walls of the tube with monel pip rivets.

The whisker pole stows on a ring fixed to the pulpit with nylon ties on  the port bow like the spinnaker pole to starboard.