Classic 14 reefing system

[chris]

Hi Robert.
I suspect you need one of these for the kicker to stay attached as you rotate the boom. I knew i had one somewhere it it has at last turned up. Happy to contribute to the reconstructed reefing system if you want it. As Ed said the boom would have to be round and the rope attached to the dangly bit that the top mainsheet block fixes to at the end of the boom, Clearlty the whole system couldn't work with centre sheeting.
I used to have a wooden boom off something smaller than a 14 that used something similar to the roller-boom reefing like this. All I can remember is that it was round and that there was circular wheel (drum, pulley?) fixed to the gooseneck end. The goose neck must have been circular. Worked like the old lawn mowers you started with a rope you wrapped round a drum.

Chris

reefing kicker.jpg

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[Ed]

yes, that is one, although obviously a Holt one rather than a Fairey one. The Fairey one had a sort of adustable top piece to the claw which comes together with 2 tufnol wheels/pads to hold the sail at top of boom.

The Fairey boom was the normal reynolds section, the same as the Firefly mast. On the end was a round drum and the gooseneck was round to allow the boom to spin.

the thin top of the boom was pulled up into the thinner part of the claw, holding the sail firmly in place.

I can't get into the back of my workshop at moment as lighting circuit has blown and its a bit dark, but will see if I have any photos anywhere of it. I know I do have a new claw, made of solid aluminium, but that is a slightly different animal.

cheers

eib

[rme_01]

Thanks for all the comments - something of an education!

Starting on the more general question of why reefing has gone out of fashion; the argument that it has been made redundant by improvements in rig control sounds about right to me albeit I suspect ease of righting, increased rescue regimes and a general drift to more extreme sailing have something to do with it as well. Personally having done most of my sailing at sea I have always rather believed in reefing with the ability to get home unassisted. Against that background a simple single slab system doesn’t seem much of an overhead to carry.

Anyhow back to the roller reefing systems of old and my query re the reefing winch on my Fairey K680. The concept of the winch rope rotating a cylinder at the front of the boom makes perfect sense and the fact that the winch is sited on the thwart and therefore accessible to the helm supports your suggestion Ed that it was a 2 man job with the crew releasing the halyard. What bothers me is that this doesn’t quite fit in with the Bob Bavier description of an “automatic” system or Alan William’s post re Audacity which suggest a continuous or “self-compensating” system. It seems that reefing experiments were popular at the time and I attach a picture from Tom Vaughan’s book showing another arrangement developed by Bruce Banks on his boat Windsong (also a Fairey and the same year 1957 as my own). Again no clues as to how this worked. Alan, was this the system you had on Audacity or was yours based on a thwart sited winch? If it was the latter are you able to recall the arrangement for releasing/tensioning the halyard? The wedges whilst practical sound grim from the aesthetic point of view!

I can well believe that Austin Farrar had a hand in all this. Given his friendship with Charles Curry and the trapeze and furling jib to his credit this would have been right up his street!

Finally Chris, thanks for the offer of the claw. I would be interested in it if you can spare it and would be happy to make a donation. Perhaps you could PM me so I can arrange collection.

[alan williams]

Hi Audacity's system was based on two winches mounted in the thwart. Which were geared to rotate together if I remember it correctly. One I think rotated clockwise and the other anticlockwise easing the haliyard and rotating the boom. As I said before we only tried it out once on shore so I can't really comment on it's performance or the difficulty of the system under load or in the heat of battle. It seemed to be able to be operated from both the starboard side and the port side. The mainsail was tension by the winches and tension held by a cam on the winch which engaged with a toothed sprocket. The cam allowed the drum to turn but it still held the tension by tripping one sproket at a time so if you stopped it locked on again. The genoa was tensioned by the good old heave on the forestay and then take up the tension by a highfield lever fitted by the previous owner. We removed the forestay when we fitted a roller furling drum. The kicking strap was taken off to reef, a wide wedge of heavy canvas tapering to an eye to which a shackle was attached this was attached to the eye in the the kicking strap wire the canvas was then rolled into the sail as it was reefed. The strap then tension with a drum winch at the base of the mast. My father had built a reefing system similar to this back in the early sixties which was used with a YW Rambler he had built for the family to go creek crawling around Essex. Whether he thought it up his system independantly (PHD Marine Engineering), or copied it and knocked a version up in his work shop. I'll never know as he died four years ago.
Cheers Alan

[chris]

Just found this cutting of an article from 1992 in Yachts and Yachting by Ausin Farrar looking back over 40 years. He's referring to a gathering in Chichester harbour autumn 1951. Int 14 no. 620 is visible in one photo.
The caption under this photo reads 'Jacques le Brun explains the Caneton.'

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[Michael Brigg]

Hi Robert.
I suspect you need one of these for the kicker to stay attached as you rotate the boom. I knew i had one somewhere it it has at last turned up. Happy to contribute to the reconstructed reefing system if you want it. As Ed said the boom would have to be round and the rope attached to the dangly bit that the top mainsheet block fixes to at the end of the boom, Clearlty the whole system couldn't work with centre sheeting.Chris

reefing kicker.jpg

These work perfectly well with centre sheeting, but you need TWO of them. One for the Kicker attatchment, and one for the centre sheet pully. The two reefing "rings" are held in position by a strong (ie non stretch) cord running from the Clew end to the Centre-main pulley ring. From there to the Kicker ring, and from there to the tack end (gooseneck) of the boom.

This was standard practice in the XOD's at Itchenor @ 40-50 years ago, when they still used rope kickers before adopting mast breaking "Tinley" kickers.

There would I am sure have been some crossbreeding between the "Beedle" class and the "Hepplethwaites." (See "Shakewell Afloat")

The Fairey system for Fireflies developed differently because of having a rotating mast, the reefing claw could be held in a fixed position with a strut which simply sat in the Mast slot. On a fixed mast such an arrangement would require a second goosneck for the claw, perfectly matched to the boom, else forces would build up as the boom was let out. Even then it would create a problem if the boom was lifted or dropped significantly during reefing, so a fixed strut was rather impractical unless used on a rotating mast.

When I sailed Itchenor Junior fortnight way back when, the main event, (The "Bantam Cock trophy") was sailed in Reduced rig fireflies. If you couldn't afford a cut down main, you had to take in 4 reefs, so a certain amount of expertise in the process became essential to make progress! The alternative to wedges in the sail (to take up the belly of the sail and maintain just a small amount of shape) was to wrap spare battens in as you reefed. a reefing claw was always a liability and tended to tear the sail. The preferred system was to put a toe strap with a bolt head to fix it in the boom, and this would be wrapped in with the sail. The kicker could then be fixed to the loose end.

Slabs of course are really the only way to get shape in a reefed sail, but these require hooks of some sort at the mast, (a real liability for catching jib sheets) and reinforced reefing eyes in the luff and leach. You dont tend to see those in Dinghy racing sails!

The lack of reefing in dinghy racing, apart from "controllable" rigs I would say is mainly due to development of the Trapeze, and secondly a greater degree of athleticism in the top end of most sailing fleets.

[JimC]

The lack of reefing in dinghy racing, apart from "controllable" rigs

I don't think one should over look the fact that, once one has a flexible rig, then a mast that bends and depowers nicely with fill sail up will turn into a horrible unresponsive telegraph pole with a reef in. Thus in turn the amount you have to reef to actually make the boat easier to sail is
very much greater.
When I built my one off singlehander I set her up with a slab reefing system which while not really usable on the water took about a minute tied onto a pontoon. You pulled a pin out and the mast telescoped downwards, used alternate eyes on shrouds and forestay with fast pins, unhooked clew and tack and attached to slab points, and a zip dealt with the excess sail. That way the mast bend response was maintained.

So what did I learn? I learned that if you have even the slightest chance of getting to the windward mark without being blown flat you don't put the reef in, because you lose so much downhill. I now suspect that reducing sail is probably only of value in boats with kites, and in that case there is no way of setting up a quick change because you have to swap kites over if you are telescoping the mast down.

So for inshore dinghy racing I think changing rig size is only really practical in boats like true Skiffs where you accept the very considerable hassle of multiple rigs, or in circumstances like team racing where the SIs can mandate that all boats reduce rig size by the same amount.