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Skerry rigging changes redux (making sure I can add pics)
The Skerry is a wonderful boat, but there are some changes I made to the rigging so it would work better for me. Many of the ideas were inspired by John C. Harris and "Lazlo."
The first problem I ran into was that the jam cleat kept catching when I tried to release the rudder. I replaced it with a cam cleat from Harken, shown here:
John pointed out that I could have placed the supplied plastic jam cleat below the tiller yoke, but I had already ordered the cam cleat.
I found that I wanted to be able to reef more easily and quickly when a wind suddenly came up, so I installed a cheek block at the top of the mast and a halyard. The only problem was that the sail lashings caught on the sprit's fairlead, so I fashioned a fairlead out of wood that allows the lashings to pass over it nicely, as shown:
Now the only problem was that the boom drops when you drop the sail and the sail itself goes all over the place. Lazlo pointed out that all I needed was lazy jacks to solve both problems. Nothing fancy about the ones I made, i.e., no blocks, just knots. The bottom sections of the jacks pass through fairleads at about 35% and 75% along the length of the boom.
The lazy jacks hold the boom up and the sails self-furl fairly well with only a little work to get them all smoothed out.
This end view shows how they "accordion" into place: 
I don't know why this worked any better. The URL I got by using "Copy Image Location" looks exactly the same as the one from the Location line at the top of the page as far as I can tell. Oh well, it's easy and it works!
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