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Mainsail slugs jamming on hoist and drop

Christian Williams

E381 - Los Angeles
Senior Moderator
Blogs Author
Proprietary slugs to be installed by sailmaker or owner. Tom Vilhauer shows how:

 

vanilladuck

E32-3 / San Francisco
Blogs Author
Loren, I haven't been able to get a better photo of the existing track on my 32-3. I just spoke with the rigging company I hired to order and fit a Tides Marine track though. They said they would install into the existing track and will shore up any loose screws on the existing track before installing. I guess this means there probably is no track underneath...
 

goldenstate

Sustaining Member
Blogs Author
Loren, I haven't been able to get a better photo of the existing track on my 32-3. I just spoke with the rigging company I hired to order and fit a Tides Marine track though. They said they would install into the existing track and will shore up any loose screws on the existing track before installing. I guess this means there probably is no track underneath...
I would be surprised if your mast extrusion didn’t have an integral luff groove. To me it would make more sense to mount the Tides track directly in the mast groove, rather than in your current external track. Otherwise you just have that external track waving around on your mast needlessly.

You would want to make the determination before the order is placed with Tides as the mast luff groove may be different from the track.

Maybe push your rigger on this a little. It may also be a challenge ($) if your current external track is difficult to remove.

.02,
 

Loren Beach

O34 - Portland, OR
Senior Moderator
Blogs Author
I would be surprised if your mast extrusion didn’t have an integral luff groove. To me it would make more sense to mount the Tides track directly in the mast groove, rather than in your current external track. Otherwise you just have that external track waving around on your mast needlessly.

You would want to make the determination before the order is placed with Tides as the mast luff groove may be different from the track.

Maybe push your rigger on this a little. It may also be a challenge ($) if your current external track is difficult to remove.

.02,
It's looking like the E-32-3 in this post and the one in my YC have the same screwed-in rectangular luff "groove" piece. Without seeing the mast section when it's horizontal I can only guess that this model had a different section than some other Ericson's and the Olson's.

(Actually, the crow is not bad with a good merlot, quite a bit of merlot, actually... :) )
 

vanilladuck

E32-3 / San Francisco
Blogs Author
Wow - I didn't even know about the hull wiki. What a great resource!

I'll call the rigger back tomorrow. They already ordered the track, but I can ask if they'd be willing to look under the existing track first. Call me a worrywart, but I'm not super fond of having hidden screws that can fail underneath the Tides track :rolleyes:

That being said, I'm looking at @Christian Williams blog entry which has a couple photos and it explains the Tides track "mounts in the original and looks like it has always been there". Thanks to the contrast against the black spar in the photos, the existing track looks very similar to the one on Rumour. So, this is probably okay. I mean.. he *did* sail Thelonious to Hawaii and back through 30kt squalls and midnight broaches and never mentioned the main ripping the track out of the mast. Unless there's a surprise ending in the book -- I've got about 60 pages left ;)
 
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vanilladuck

E32-3 / San Francisco
Blogs Author
Just got off the phone with the rigging company. They explained the external flat track seen in my mast is actually embedded into a groove on both sides. As we talked, they walked me through the RigRite site: https://www.rigrite.com/Spars/Kenyon_Spars/KENYON.php#Cruising Sections (not sure why I didn't investigate there first on my own <sigh>)

Annotation 2020-09-08 162534.png

I described how the track "popped out" and they said it was most likely shifted in place and this is why the existing flat lugs were hung up between sections. The screws are there to make sure the sections of track are aligned well. Once they install the Tides Marine track, it won't matter if there are small mis-alignments in the original sectioned track.

My mind is at ease. All is well. Who knows, maybe I'll be able to go sailing again soon. And, just maybe my main sail will drop like a piano too.
 

vanilladuck

E32-3 / San Francisco
Blogs Author
The Tides Marine sail track is ahh-maze-zing. Been out sailing a few times since having it installed and it lives up to every expectation.

My main sail still needs to be yanked down while standing at the mast, but I'm 99% percent sure this is because the old wire-to-rope halyards are severely bloated from years of salt and use. I'll be replacing those soon with some nice New England Sta-Set 7/16" all rope halyards which were spliced by Defender Marine.
 
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