MacGregorSailors.com

Here,s an old pic of mine u can see I fly my main loose footed , & u can see my cunningham
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee20 ... 010095.jpg

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee20 ... 010098.jpg

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee20 ... 010113.jpg

J
PS When K/H Sails came out with the Fat Head main sail they cleared-out the mac original mains @ $250.00 glad I bought one for a spare

A brand-new Hunter 216 main sail (boat is out of production) was $300 last year on ebay - and they fit very nicely on a 26X.

Good points SteveK. If you do happen to replace the bolt rope, another option for installing the new one is to attach (butt connect it, a few stitches are best, but tape will do it too) the new one to the old one, and pull the new one into the pocket as you withdraw the old one at the same time. Easier with two people, and in lieu of a fid.
-B.

seahouse wrote:Good points SteveK. If you do happen to replace the bolt rope, another option for installing the new one is to attach (butt connect it, a few stitches are best, but tape will do it too) the new one to the old one, and pull the new one into the pocket as you withdraw the old one at the same time. Easier with two people, and in lieu of a fid.
-B.

Duh, where is my head some days
Of course using the old rope to pull the new one through is a good... perhaps the best way. I've done this and I've used old electric wire to pull new wire through conduit. Gee, I'm forgetting stuff now. Hope I can remember my name next week

By the way, don't exactly know how the foot of the sail came into the conversation, but I do have a loose foot main and I like it a lot. I had one on my X boat too. I'm a big fan of loose footed, full batten main sails. I've had nothing but this type of main for over ten years now. You can get an idea of how a loose foot works (to see if you like it), by just sailing your regular main in a loose foot fashion. You'll need an outhaul slug, or temporarily strap the outhaul cringle down to the boom (keeping it loose enough to still be able to use the outhaul).

I found on both Macs that you'll need something better than the factory outhaul setup if you go to loose foot.
(I think you need to improve the outhaul anyway, but with a loose footed main, you surely will want better outhaul control).
And full battens are the bomb

If you have a good main (factory type) it's easy to convert it to loose foot, by simply removing the bolt rope and replacing it with a leech line. Then strap in the outhaul slug with some webbing, to the outhaul cringle. Some sewing may be required on the foot of the sail as you may want to sew Dacron sail tape along the foot for reinforcement, when adding the leech line. This in not sticky tape, it's just a strip of sail material, folded in half along it's length and sewn to the foot of the sail (couple rows of zigzag stitches).

Once you go loose foot, full battens, you'll never go back (And a floating goose neck with downhaul control is icing on the cake IMHO.

BB,
SK

Hello,
A comment about the "knee" you mention in the pic. It is due to where the tack is attached. The sail was originally cut to have a pin and ring ding in the slot of the boom. When slides are added the tack needs to be further aft. Once the tack is lower and further aft the sail shape will be much better.

In this pic you can see how far aft the tack is on my boom.

Don T wrote:A comment about the "knee" you mention in the pic. It is due to where the tack is attached. The sail was originally cut to have a pin and ring ding in the slot of the boom. When slides are added the tack needs to be further aft. Once the tack is lower and further aft the sail shape will be much better.

I see what you're saying about that tack fitting and the 'knee'. Looking at it now, it seems the 'knee' is just a distortion of the luff, as the bolt rope would originally have been in the mast slot and straight, all the way to the apex of the 'knee', where it would angle back, out of the slot, to the tack. I actually added the twisted shackle, to bring the tack back a bit, but maybe not far enough. I think I got it from BWY, as it's recommended specifically for main sails with slides. I may try bringing it further aft to see what it looks like. Once I free the bolt rope, at least. Didn't get a chance to play with it last night.

OK, so I cut the stitching through the bolt rope at the bottom, and when I hoisted, the bolt rope pulled up at least 7 inches. You can see a little bump a couple of inches below the first slide. The 'knee' doesn't look so much like a knee any more, as it's probably closer to what the sail was cut to look like in that area. I have to experiment some more with how far back the tack fitting should be, and I still have some room at the clew for outhaul adjustment.



It's hard to tell if the shape is any better, as it's pretty baggy, but it's windy here today, so I can't really adjust it as I would while sailing. I hardened it up a little and took the picture between gusts, then cut the main sheet loose again.



The headboard, without question, is higher than it was before, presumably by the same amount the bolt rope slide inside its sleeve.

Tomfoolery wrote:

Don T wrote:A comment about the "knee" you mention in the pic. It is due to where the tack is attached. The sail was originally cut to have a pin and ring ding in the slot of the boom. When slides are added the tack needs to be further aft. Once the tack is lower and further aft the sail shape will be much better.

I see what you're saying about that tack fitting and the 'knee'. Looking at it now, it seems the 'knee' is just a distortion of the luff, as the bolt rope would originally have been in the mast slot and straight, all the way to the apex of the 'knee', where it would angle back, out of the slot, to the tack. I actually added the twisted shackle, to bring the tack back a bit, but maybe not far enough. I think I got it from BWY, as it's recommended specifically for main sails with slides. I may try bringing it further aft to see what it looks like. Once I free the bolt rope, at least. Didn't get a chance to play with it last night.

BWY sells a twisted shackle to mount at the forward end of the boom. This gets the tack away from the gooseneck fitting when using slides.

RobertB wrote:

Tomfoolery wrote:I actually added the twisted shackle, to bring the tack back a bit, but maybe not far enough. I think I got it from BWY, as it's recommended specifically for main sails with slides. I may try bringing it further aft to see what it looks like.

BWY sells a twisted shackle to mount at the forward end of the boom. This gets the tack away from the gooseneck fitting when using slides.

I already have that twisted shackle in there, in the pic you used in the quote. It doesn't move the tack back far enough, though, so I added some other hardware to move it further back, just for experimentation purposes. It's hard to see, so here's a close-up. And to think, the PO didn't use anything in there, as far as I know.



I have to get it out on the water this weekend to play some more.

The twisted shackle is mounted per BWY instructions in a hole you drill in the top of the boom. This will move the tack a few inches back.

EDIT: A pin goes thru the drilled hole and the shackle engages this pin in the boltrope groove.

Tom,
Pretty baggy still, but looks better.

Questions:
1.Do you have the main halyard good and tight?
You really need a purchase in it to get it tight enough.
(search "Truckers Hitch" and use this self purchasing knot to get the halyard good and tight........... assuming it is cleated at the mast and not lead to cockpit winches)

2. The leech looks pretty tight, causing some of the bagginess. Is your leech line completely loose? make sure it is not cleated, then when sailing, just cleat it up enough to keep the leech from fluttering.

BB,
SK

Steve K wrote:1.Do you have the main halyard good and tight?

No. It could be tighter. It's brought back to the cockpit (though that's of questionable value on this boat), but I hadn't tightened it hardly at all in this pic. It was pretty gusty off the port beam, so I just wanted to put it tight, see what the bolt rope did (it slid, as expected), and get a few shots before the wind blew the boat off the trailer.

Steve K wrote:2. The leech looks pretty tight, causing some of the bagginess. Is your leech line completely loose?

It's as slack as it gets now. It was cleated when I first started playing with it, with about an inch taken in, but both locations are now free and the bottom is all the way in to the knot. It looks like Russ' pic above, so presumably he has the same or similar original sail.

I still have to play with the tack location (RobertB caught me off guard with the pin through the boom mention - I didn't know that was part of the retrofit, but that's how my Hunter was rigged as I recall), but most of the bagginess that's left isn't going to go away. I'll try loose footed also, when I can get back out there, with calm air.

I just booked a slip in Canandaigua Lake for the next week or so, so I'll be able to put it to work and see how she does, loose footed or otherwise.

Okay..........
only other thing I could suggest is sending this sail out to "Sail care" for cleaning and re-resin process. This is not a cure all either, but will help shape some. I've had two mains done by "Sail care". It helps, as advertised, but don't expect a like new sail. So, having said that, you might want to just save the $150 or so, to put towards your new main.

Short of re-cutting, which is only cost effective if you do it yourself,............................................. after reading "The Sail maker's Apprentice" cover to cover. (This, I haven't done ((re-cutting, the reading I have))......... Just not worth the effort to get another season out of a sail for me) I think this is about all there is. But your pictures show improvement in the shape of the old sail, so continue on and try some of the other suggestions to see if it further improves things. I know guys who buy new sails every couple years and I know others who have used them until they fall off the mast in shreds. I'm somewhere in the middle of these extremes, but can say, the older your old sail is, the better that new one feels the first time you sail with it.

It's like getting new glasses.... you really didn't realize how bad things were until you look through those new, scratch free, lenses.

BB,
SK

I drilled a hole in the boom for the twisted shackle (thanks, RobertB), and that now puts down force on the tack instead of the bolt rope taking it just where it ends. The 'knee' no longer looks like a knee. It looks like how it's supposed to look - straight down the mast, then angled back to the tack.



Sail shape looks like it's about as good as it's going to get, though I will still try flying it loose-footed, especially now that the tack is being held close to the structure rather than on the end of a chain of shackles.

From the stern.



The luff angle of attach is pretty far dead ahead. Like 45 degrees with the boom on the boat centerline.



The camera is oriented so the leading edge is straight on, especially near the top (hard to see in the pic, though). Pretty steep angle. Pretty baggy near the mast.