27 July 2008

how I rig a Laser

I made some photos today of the new racing rigg that we recently installed on the remaining two Laser sail boats.
Here is a quick summary how I rig those boats. Fine-points of rigging are in the photo-descriptions. In my first year at the club, I thought Lasers were hard to rig, but now I think it's really easy and quickly to be done!
  1. close the plug and the auto-bailer
  2. put the two parts of the mast together and put the sail on
  3. make sure the battens are in the sail and put the mast on the boat
  4. secure the mast with the tie-down (go once around so the line crosses twice over the rig)
  5. loop the aft end of the outhaul through the boom and the clue of the sail and tie it to the boom
  6. bring the fore-end of the outhaul through the pulleys and pull it while plucking the boom onto the mast; secure by cleating the outhaul's handle into it's place
  7. set up the tie-down at the clue of the sail (as to remind me of not forgetting this, I always leave the piece of line for this tied on the boom when I derig)
  8. set up the cunningham
  9. tie the loose end of the sheet to the aft-end of the hiking strap, make an additional eight-knot just behind the main block (some people also tie the sheet to the fore-end of the hiking-strap. when you do this, make sure to leave enough loose between the eightknot and the end-of-sheet, otherwise it's awkward to pull when the sheet's all out. currently I am trying a third variant: not tying the main sheet to anything in the cockpit, but having two eight-knots with a fair distance between them, so I always have something to pull on, even when the sheet's all out.)
  10. bring the sheet through the block on deck and through the ones at the boom don't bring it down to the transom yet, just tie a figure-of-eight at the end
  11. now I go change into sailing clothes and on my way back bring the life-jacket, rudder and centre-board
  12. run the centre-board's tension cord through the little loops created by the mast tie-down and hook or tie them together; install rudder and tiller
  13. check the plug and the auto-bailer again and put the boat afloat
  14. put the centre-board and the rudder down
  15. being at the transom already, pull the main sheet through the block on deck and tie it back to the boom
  16. hook-on the boom-vang and secure it with the tension string that's already on the boom.
  17. check all your lines again and sail off
Remember that this is only the check-list of things to go through, it doesn't say how to do all those things. Anybody who wants to do this for the first time, should get proper instruction first.

1 comments:

Ole said...

Hi Jack,
really a nice post, you should post the link on the J-Town Facebook Group!
Ole

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