Photograph of Grand Soleil 44 courtesy of Grand Soleil
Q: In one in all your latest Ask Sail responses, you wrote about loose-footed mainsails. I’ve an S2 7.9 that has a rope-footed primary. Since I’m simply cruising and never racing, may I simply go away the rope out of the monitor and sail it as if it had been loose-footed, or am I asking for hassle?
— Marc Marschark, through [email protected]
BRIAN HANCOCK REPLIES
You’ve a boltrope on the foot of your primary that threads right into a groove in your growth. There are a few issues to consider. You’ll be able to undoubtedly fly it loose-footed, and as you in all probability learn within the different article, there are fairly a couple of benefits to doing so, together with extra management over sail form. Nevertheless, there must be a reasonably substantial outhaul automotive to connect the outhaul to to ensure that this to work. I say pretty substantial as a result of the load on the foot of the sail when it’s within the groove is far lower than when it goes straight onto the automotive alone. I believe in your case the automotive may not be as much as the duty, however don’t fear. You’ll be able to ask your sailmaker to make you an outhaul strap, principally a size of webbing with Velcro sewn onto it that you just loop across the growth and thru the clew of the primary. The Velcro binds to itself, and you can be stunned at how robust Velcro is in sheer: lots robust, in actual fact, to take the load off the outhaul automotive. You even can take away the outhaul automotive totally when you like, and fasten the outhaul on to the clew of the sail. Past that, the difficulty is one in all aesthetics. Having the boltrope nonetheless working alongside the foot of the primary could make the sail look a bit clunky. It shouldn’t price a lot, although, to have your sailmaker trim it off and add a foot tape.
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