Mainsail Sail Slides - not getting these

[c130king]

Mine looks home-made...pried apart with a screw driver. Probalby only 4" in length. I will email my PO and ask him about it.

Jim

[Trouts Dream]

Mine also has the pried open look but I am sure its factory as there are no pry marks. It may have more to do with the year, I have a 97X.

[ALX357]

Bonus question: What are the little coiled up lines on the back of my Doyle mainsail for?

Jim

They are the < CORRECTION > leech lines, that tighten the free edge, to control belly in the sails. They are coiled up like a hangman's noose to keep them out of the way, until/unless you need to let them out. The sail should have plastic jam cleats for them where they exit the sail.

!	kmclemore:
	Fixed quote

[delevi]

Leech line and Foot line. Some sails don't have a foot line, generally only loose-footed mainsails will have one, but virtually every sail has a leech line. On a new sail, you usually leave it slack. As the sail ages and developes a bit of stretch, additional support is needed to the leech. You then take up some of the leech line and wedge it in the plastic cleat. Best done with sail hoisted under small load. You want enough tension so the leech doesn't flap when the sail is trimmed, but not too much as to cause wrinkles on the leech or worse yet a bowl-shape. This is usually easier on a mainsail than a jib. The jib/genoa relies more on the leech line since it doesn't use battens. I found it nearly impossible to get perfect support near the head of the jib without a slight bowl shape. Slight being key here. The bowl usually disappears when the sail is trimmed for upwind tack. As for the foot line, just very modest tension, just enough to take the slack out. Hope this helps.

on edit:
Alx, you don't want to use these lines to control the belly/draft. That's a job for the outhaul. Granted, a tight leech line will increase draft, but I don't think this is what it was designed for. Keeping it tight all the time will wear out the leech pocket, create extra stress on the sail, etc, etc. On my old blown out sails, I had the leech line very tight as it was the only thing I could do to maintain any kind of sail shape. The cleat eventually failed. Sails were replaced soon after.

Leon

[Inquisitor]

Bonus question: What are the little coiled up lines on the back of my Doyle mainsail for?
Jim

Reading through the thread... I thought I was going to get the bonus prize, but ALX357 beat me to it. I think they are called leech lines. They run up the leech. When you get the sails set just right and you're in the groove, and you've got that big sh~t eating grin. Well, sometimes the leech will start fluttering. Pulling a little bit on that tightens up the leech and eliminates the flutter. But doing it too much cups the edge of the sail and hurts its performance. So... basically its a very subtle performance tuner.

Probably more important that the fluttering doesn't distract from the moment!

[ronacarme]

Spinlock mainsail feeder,$62.99 @ Defender Marine, $72.99 @ West Marine.
Releasably fits in mainmast track.
Mine used continuously on my 1988 26D and my present 2001 26X and I would not be without it. Liked it much better than the slides I had added to the main on my old 1972 Venture 17.
Ron

[bubba]

We went by Yager Sails in Spokane WA Wed afternoon on our way to my wife's daughters wedding by Lake Cour d' Lene ID and Don Yager the sailmaker wanted to measure out sails to give us a better quote on our mainsail and he was showing my wife and I the different sailslides he put on sails. The sail slides he installes are about 1.5 inch long and attach with a metal shackle to the sail so we bought 6 for the sail top because he didn't have enough for his current project to sell us all of them and we installed them in about 5 min while in his shop. We put the boat in the water and attached the sail but the wind picked up to 46 mph with spring snow showers so were just setting out the weather at the dock and are sailing on Sunday after the Saturday wedding so I will report on the new slides Sunday evening.

[ALX357]

re leech lines....

ok thanx for the corrections .... on my old stretched-out ten-year-old mainsail, it does help to tighten the leech line and restore some of the shape.

[bubba]

I noticed the slides on the luff lines are causing the shorter stock slides to pull sideways causing some drag when hoisting the main sail. ( Luff lines are the lines that allow the sail to lay down on the boom when reefing.)

[Highlander]

Yes
I also wished I'd gone with the 1/2" longer slides with the groved out slots that guide the slide from the outside of the slot also preventing them from turning & thus less likely to jam
Bubba I don't think anybody is trying to talk you out of improving your boat But our mainsails are small & not that heavy bigger & longer slides is the way I'd go bigger bang for the Buck no need to transfer that gold deposit ! . Plus have you checked out what the added weight aloft would be !!

J

[c130king]

I noticed the slides on the luff lines are causing the shorter stock slides to pull sideways causing some drag when hoisting the main sail. ( Luff lines are the lines that allow the sail to lay down on the boom when reefing.)

Bubba,

I gotta admit that your statement does not make sense to me. Luff lines? And there are slides on these luff lines? Do you have pictures?

I only have the sailrite plastic sail slides (aka sail slugs) attached over the bolt rope inside the luff of the main. 16 slides I think...and I think these are the "shorter stock slides" you are referring to. I have never noticed any twisting, pulling or excessive drag. And I guess I don't have a luff line with slides pulling the other slides.

"Lines that allow the sail to lay down on the boom when reefing"...that is what my lazy jacks do.

Not trying to be argumentative in any way...just a little confused...but that is nothing new.

Cheers,
Jim

[Duane Dunn, Allegro]

Perhaps your boat has a single line reefing system installed? It's a single line that goes through all the reefing grommets that you pull to reef.

Or perhaps your sail has been outfitted with a jack line for reefing. BWY set boats up like this for quite a while. Rather than attaching the slides directly to the sail in the lower reefing area, they instead ran a jack line through grommets in this lower area. Between grommets they installed sail slides loose on the jack line. This let you reef the main without having to remove any lower slides from the sail track.

Neither of these is a stock installation, The factory has only ever shipped sails that require the bolt rope to be fed into the sail track. Anything else is dealer or owner installed.

[delevi]

OK Bubba,

If you want the ultimate solution and are ready to spend some cash, scrap all of the above in this thread and the musclehead thread. Get yourself a boom-furling unit with matching mast track. Then have a full batten sail built for that system. No sail slides/slugs. No reefing lines. No reef points or cunningham cringle needed. No lazy jax or sail cover needed. Unlimited reefing range. You will probably save some money on the sail as well as the mast track (the furling system will come with its own) and eliminate the cost of the sail cover/cradle/lazy jax. I'm sure you'll spend more overall since the system is around $5K+ but you will have the ultimate mainsail setup.

Leon

[c130king]

Perhaps your boat has a single line reefing system installed? It's a single line that goes through all the reefing grommets that you pull to reef.

Yes I have single-line reefing system.

Or perhaps your sail has been outfitted with a jack line for reefing. BWY set boats up like this for quite a while. Rather than attaching the slides directly to the sail in the lower reefing area, they instead ran a jack line through grommets in this lower area. Between grommets they installed sail slides loose on the jack line. This let you reef the main without having to remove any lower slides from the sail track.

Neither of these is a stock installation, The factory has only ever shipped sails that require the bolt rope to be fed into the sail track. Anything else is dealer or owner installed.

I think I understand what you are talking about here. Anyone got pictures of this sort of set-up?

The "sail slides loose on the jack line"...do they run in the same track as the slides above the reefing grommet? I can't see in my mind's eye how this helps. Seems like you would still have the stack of slides above the slug stopper preventing the reefing tack grommet to go as low as possible.


Thanks,
Jim

[bubba]

Perhaps your boat has a single line reefing system installed? It's a single line that goes through all the reefing grommets that you pull to reef.

Or perhaps your sail has been outfitted with a jack line for reefing. BWY set boats up like this for quite a while. Rather than attaching the slides directly to the sail in the lower reefing area, they instead ran a jack line through grommets in this lower area. Between grommets they installed sail slides loose on the jack line. This let you reef the main without having to remove any lower slides from the sail track.

We bought our boat used thru BWY's and we have both reefing lines (3 reefs ) and jack lines for each reef that lets the sail lay on the boom when reefed for good sail shape. The Jack lines have slides attached and there going up a bit twisted because of the short length compaired to the longer Slick Slides we picked up at Yager Sails last week. The problem is we could't get the good longer slides to replace all of them just 7 for now but more to come.

I'll post photos of the new slides.

!	kmclemore:
	Fixed quote for clarity.