Releasing the main sail and rotation

[Mac M]

Im having a heck of a time releasing the main on my 20 tall rig. It hooks very easily, just pull it up and give it a tug down and it's hooked. When I try and take it down I pull it up and then try and rotate the mast and pull down (all with another person). One problem is it so hard to rotate the mast by hand, I released an extender today doing it. After a bunch of attempts it finally released, not sure what I did that time that was any different. Any ideas?


There is no more adjustment on these are there? They are retry hard to lock down. The mast is so hard to rotate. It does seem to be rotating under sail although not too much dpwnwind. Guess these are two different questions!

[havliii]

Is the clew of the sail released from the boom?
Try opening both shroud extenders.
Are you dead head to wind?
ANY pressure at all in the main sail makes it hard to rotate and unhook. or worse still the main will fill and flip towards the hook holding the ring fast on the hook.

[Mac M]

Mine is boomless, I did ave the big tube in the bottom pocket tensioned though.
Had it into the wind
Thought about releasing both extenders, will try next

[Matt Haberman]

Mac,

A couple of things to try with regards to releasing the mainsail:

1) Take the tube out of the bottom batten pocket, I find that it is nearly impossible to release with that tube in the sail.

2) Stand on the same side of the mainsail as the hook is on the mast, then when you rotate the mast by pushing forward on the diamond wire you can push the sail the opposite direction with your shoulder.

Regarding mast rotation, the mast should rotate by hand until the sail track points towards where the side stays attach to the hull.

The shroud levers you have look like what was shipped with the boats in the early 80's, and yes the number of holes is correct. I would like to point out that your shroud extension wire should be attached to the small hole on the hull tang, not the eye strap on the lever. When you extend the shroud and the hull drops over center there is a pretty good shock load on that wire and I really doubt that eye strap is going to hang in there.

[Mac M]

Thanks for the quick responses!

Will try today with the tube out.

Thanks for the tip on the extension wire. Would there be any advantage to getting the new style levers?

[Matt Haberman]

Mac,

No advantage to the newer levers. Functionally they are identical, just a few very subtle changes which are essentially cosmetic.

[Mac M]

Went out today and couldn't get the main down. Luckily I still had our bucket truck there and was able to get it down that way. I had someone try and get it down while I was up in the truck so I could see what was going on. When the sail was raised and the mast rotated, the ring followed mast, so it wouldn't release when pulled down. I had the bottom tube out as well. At a loss here....any more advice???

[whalerman]

Mac,

Make sure the knot on the halyard ring is on the same side as the point on the mast hook. Matt gave me this no fail tip a couple of years ago. It works like a charm.

Whalerman

[Matt Haberman]

Mac,

Take a look at this thread. There are several pictures on the 2nd page that show the halyard ring and hook that should be helpful..

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=170&hilit=halyard+ring