There is no ropes on a boat (just so many bloody lines!!) - Ep160 - The Sailing Frenchman
So this package just arrived today and let's start this So many lines! Right, I'm going to talk a lot about gears in this episode my point isn't to sell you anything or to push you towards one brand or another it's more to give you some details about technicalities on certain technologies and kind of what's around and how to choose some stuff so the idea is for me just to share what I learned of the over the past a few years of cruising and then racing and kind of how to choose lines and how to uh look into certain details if you want to discuss running rigging just stay there I'll talk about this in a minute and if you don't want to well maybe you have some bachata to dance or aquaponey to attend oh and of course yes this So this for example that's my endless furling line for the gennaker furler and the one i've been using since a while is too thin, so it's really hard to furl the the gennaker so I've ordered a new one to svb that is a bit more thick and that should fit better it's basically just a continuous loop that goes in the furler and never stops and this one is spliced so you can't really see that there is a splice and just goes all around so i hope that this will improve the furling on my gennaker For me this is quite a benefit because I know how to splice these but i'm not professional and this just comes all the way done to you from the production line so from gleistein so it's pretty cool It looks like it fits really nicely, see even like this putting load on it should be perfect so really nice, let's try it out So one of the things on my to-do list to prepare for the mini transat is changing all the running rigging or maybe not all of it but the lines I have at the moment they've done I think already 7 000 nautical miles I'm not sure of what was on the ball when I started but it's not the best materials so SVB have been helping me to get new lines I'm getting all Gleistein running rigging I didn't know about them before but I've heard lots of good about them and I'll be showing you what I've got and more especially why I chose the lines I chose because you know there is big catalog with lots of different models and why I chose the line for this or this usage So first things first: To talk about lines on a boat, you need to know that your lines are built of two parts the core and the cover So see here I have my cover which is white and green and in there i have the core which is able to slide kind of onto that. So the core is what is going to give the strenght to your line The cover is what is going to protect it, to give it some grip for instance this core is dyneema so really strong but also dyneema doesn't like UV so in order to protect the core dyneema you have a cover that will be also made maybe from dyneema maybe from something else So that's a bit the two things important cover here and core of your line okay ? In order to choose the adapted line for your boat for example in my case what I do is that all the lines that I have my hands on all the time, so for example the running backstay purchase system Or the main sheet traveler, the main sheet... things like this so these the inside is a dyneema Dyneema is a brand, you have a different quality of dyneema fiber. a good standard is SK78 it's really really strong, breaking loads are just huge so the inside of the core of these lines is SK78, but the thing is that with some lines for example see this is my old halyard, it's kind of shiny and this hurts your hands with time and it's slippery as well these lines the see how it's kind of fluffy so it's still a part dyneema part polyester but kind of it will gives you a nicer touch to your lines for those line that you're using all the time it's nice to have this kind of woolly feeling. If you don't want to go for
expensive lines you can also go for polyester, it will give a nicer touch even if it's less durable in time so yeah these are for the lines that I have my hands on constantly Another aspect of when you're choosing your lines is their elongation so it's how much they stretch when they are under load. In general, on boats for most things you want something that doesn't stretch, for example for your halyards for your sheets you know when you trim your main sail and you put tension on the halyard you don't want to be doing something else and you turn around and then this much stretched and you lost all your luff tension, so non-stretch is something super super important and there's some use where it's even more important for example running back stay also on my boat, you know I have these lines holding the bowsprit in place these I don't want them to give at all, so for those I chose lines that core is made of dyneema SK99 the elongation is even less, I think it's around 4% on these ones when the other ones for example the fluffy ones are around 6 or 8%, yeah the the SK99 is really non-stretch so it won't give under load. So for my running back stays for the bowsprit for your halyards eventually you want something that doesn't give and that's SK99 So this is the line holding my bowsprit on either side and you would not be able to tell that it's SK99 by touching it or I mean maybe some people can, I cannot so you need to know and buy this on purpose and also what's really cool is that I've asked for all the exact measurements and for what type of splicing I wanted and they just sent me everything already spliced which is pretty convenient because doing something like this takes a lot of time and to do it so nice looking as this.... it's not easy at all believe me That's a super cool option to have this, so thanks a lot SVB and Gleistein, it definitely helps a lot And the last type of lines I've asked for is for example either for spinnaker sheets or jib sheets, for all those that you're handling often I chose something that core same thing is SK78 but the cover is going to be a mix of dyneema, technora and polyester so it's at the same time nice on your hands but at the same time really much chafe resistant which is what you want for lines that are all the time on winches So that's a bit the overview on all the lines I have onboard and now i'm installing them and i'll show you a little trick that i'm doing to run halyards through the mast easily and yeah that's it One way of getting your new halyard through the mast is to use the old one as messenger and kind of connects the new one to it, just use a needle and a piece of whipping twine and you just go through them a few times like this put a bit of tape and run it through it works perfectly and you just want to have a strong bond so if it gets caught somewhere it doesn't break. I know some people do it with just tape and that's a bit ballsy because if it breaks then you lose your messenger and it's a pain in the neck to re-run the halyard through. This technique of sewing them together works really well but it's time-consuming and let's say I have my halyard that cover is broken i need to change it quickly during a race you don't want to be you know doing like your stitching and running it through and then cut the stitching... all that
The way I do it is the following I take my halyard and I just do a little loop like this at the end, that is thin enough to be able to run through the blocks and this one even runs through my constrictors so it's nice and convenient and then I just have to attach this loop to a messenger or if I do it on two halyards, so on my spare halyard and my actual one that I just connect them in between here with a little piece of dyneema and I run them through. So the way to do this without any over diameter is pretty simple. You take the end of your line you want to do this with that's my spare halyard so I'll do it on that one. Just get the line you want to do this with Cut whatever is at the end, whether it's a whipping or whether if it's burnt you put a little bit of tape just to let make it look nice, here you go and now you're going to pull the core out from the cover for about 15/20 centimeters, and I'm going to cut the core There you go, you don't need this anymore and now you're going to pull the cover from far away you're going to prussic it, to pull the cover again on top of the core so you pull like this and see how the core is going to go back inside the cover, okay so here i have my core that finishes here, and this is just cover and i'm going to just put it back into itself and we'll do some stitching , let me show you how to do this so this end that is a bit frayed i'm just going to tape it okay that's taped i'm going to take my small needle prussic it properly This is going to end up about like this, the end of the core is here, I take about this much I want a loop about this big, so I get my needle to enter here i push my needle all the way until where the core inside is, you can't see but you'll be able to feel it if you do it at home just push it out, here, put the tapered tape in there push it and then struggle a little and until it gets out there it goes once it's here you can remove the tape then you can pull that cover back in, really slowly just so it finishes flush there I have this end here not really nice but it's fine i'll cut it so you have your loop and your cover that gets into itself okay at that stage be careful not to pull too much because if you pull it will easily go out first you need to get your needle with a piece of line you do figure eight knots at the end, there you go So where the cover is into itself you start, go through diagonal, there you go here it's not going to be lots of strenght, I just need to hold in place so i'll just go in and out like this a few times every kind of centimeters or something like that do a few more passes through there we go, boom cut the line... boom, done so this looks like this the cover of the line finishes here then i have the cover that goes back into itself with some stitches it cannot undo itself and now I can attach these to any other messenger or the old halyard and just pull it through the mast see that took me about five minutes to do here on shore but it can save you a lot of hassle and time once you're on the water and you want to do a halyard change or if you have any problem with your halyards at sea so yeah pretty easy. Alright, 3 mores to do and done
and so today i'm tackling an important part of the running rig which is the bowsprit It's where I have my head sails tack running to, so I have two friction rings here that are for two different tack lines, see how they're beaten up and just one loop that i have in case one of these friction ring brakes And I can clip my gennaker directly onto this these two lines are the ones holding the bowsprit laterally when it's in place and under here you have a 5:1 purchase system that allows me to control the altitude of the bowsprit when it's in place so i'm kind of going to just change everything make sure that everything is set there's huge forces onto that bowsprit, so I really want everything to be running smoothly and also i'm going to try to work on weight try to have the whole thing as light as possible You've been asking me a lot about how this bowsprit operates, it's actually quite simple so when it's on rest position I just have a bungee to hold it to the side, one side or the other and then I just release this and I have this here, see I can pull from the cockpit and when I pull on it it, it goes and straighten up and then it's just these two red lines that hold the bowsprit on one side or the other, so I always keep the bowsprit slightly to windward and eventually on the winch if there is lots of wind so yeah pretty simple no? and when I don't need it anymore, I drop the sail and then just release one of the line that is to windward and then the bowsprit will naturally fall to leeward and I just pick it back and put it back onto its bungee, yeah pretty simple all right go go Well if you're still here it means that you enjoy the boat geek stuff or that you fell asleep but either way if you like this kind of content please leave a comment it does help me to kind of spot what kind of content you guys like and thank you so much and fair winds
2021-08-26 20:50
