Why It Was Hard to Raise and Lower My Mainsail

      Or, Bigger isn’t always better!

April 29, 2013

     “Mine’s bigger!”

Some braggart

  Ever since I bought this boat more than two years ago, it’s been difficult to get the mainsail up and down. Even using a winch, it took a lot of muscle power to get the sail up. When it was time to come in, I had to go up to the mast and tug the sail all the way down.

I have “lazy jacks” on my boat. These are lines that pull out of the way to the mast when not needed. However, when you want to lower the mainsail, you tighten them by pulling on one small line on each side of the mast, and three lines spread out on each side like a basket. They catch the dropping sail, which should drop like a stone when released.

So dropping the sail should be a piece of cake. It’s quite convenient when single-handing, because you don’t have to try to both manage the boat and secure the mainsail with ties immediately so it won’t flop around and block your vision all at the same time.

But no matter what I did, the sail never dropped easily. It would drop a few feet, and then stop. I would have to go up to the mast and manually pull the sail down. That’s what you call inconvenient.

Someone put lubricant on a paper towel and forced it to slide up the groove in the mast where the slots that hold the sail to the mast travel. It didn’t help. I sprayed the slots with silicon spray. It didn’t work. I tried other lubricants, such as WD-40 and PB Blaster. Nothing worked.

Then one day about six months ago, someone said, “Are you sure this is the right sized halyard for the blocks in your mast?” Not being Superman, I lacked x-ray vision, couldn’t see inside the mast, but as we looked at the line, it looked “fuzzy” –- it had been rubbing on something. This wasn't degredation from UV rays; that part of the halyard had been protected in the mast.

So I put a new halyard on the mainsail, one size smaller than the old line. Immediately, the sail dropped like a stone any time I released it. That’s all you have to do on my boat now when coming in –- tighten the lazy jack lines and release the mainsail, and it drops like a stone, perfectly contained and under control.

So then I started thinking about my traveler. It was also hard to work, and its lines were fuzzy also. So I looked at the blocks (unlike my situation with the mast, they are all visible on the traveler), and sure enough, two of them were quite small. The line was much too big for the smallest blocks it had to move through, causing a lot of unnecessary friction. This is actually fairly serious, because one very good strategy if you get hit with a sudden gust of wind is to depower the mainsail by releasing the traveler.

I had done all the same things to the traveler that I had tried with the mainsail – lubricating everything with multiple lubricants, with minimal or no improvement. Now I have smaller line on my traveler, and it works reliably and with ease.

It also turned out that the headsail sheets –- the sheets you use to tack your jib or Genoa – were too big. I had self-tailing winches that couldn’t self-tail because the line used was too big. I’d found that mistake early on because its effects were so obvious, but it hadn’t occurred to me that the previous owner might have oversized other lines as well.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that “bigger is better” –- even safer –- than smaller lines, but particularly when it came to the mainsail, the opposite was true. Someone had to go stand on the cabin top and reach way up to pull the sail down. Even holding on with one hand, that’s an inherently unbalanced position. The cabin top of my boat has multiple levels and curves, and it’s easy to take a misstep.

Your mainsail halyard, especially if it moves through the inside of your mast, has to make a number of turns. This is increased if your mainsail sheet comes back to your cockpit, and you need that if you’re going to single-hand your boat. My personal opinion is that all small and mid-sized sailboats should have running rigging that allows you to single-hand. Maybe you never intend on doing that, but if your sailing partner sprains an ankle, you’ll have a much easier time getting back in if all your running rigging comes back to the cockpit. You’ll also have your crew in a safer position than standing at the mast to raise and lower the sail.

Since this happened I’ve heard similar stories from a number of other sailors. So if you find the lines on your boat seem to fight you, first trace them to make sure they’re not caught on something (mainsail halyards, for instance, are notorious for getting caught on things like the steaming light), and then consider whether the line is actually the right size for the mechanical parts it must travel through in order to do its job.

You should always wear gloves when sailing. You’ll be able to grip the lines better and pull harder, without worrying about a rope burn. But in addition, gloves also make it easier to get a good grasp on smaller diameter lines. Bigger isn’t better. The line that fits the hardware it will travel through is the size you want.