Bottlescrews???

Originally posted by iGRF Originally posted by Do Different Sailing by the lee may be faster but it doesn't make it right.  Had another thought has a shroud ‘traveller’ arrangement ever been tried? So they move forward and aft as you rake the rig?

Originally posted by mongrel Tasars use this, its only control by a 2:1 line & cleat at the base of the shroud, on a development boat you could add control lines for this method.

Thanks for that intel we have a couple of tasars racing at our place now I'll check them out.

Originally posted by Old bloke Using a Highfield lever (invented by Mr Highfield acc to Wikipedia) to let off the leeward shroud is well known, however, getting forwards and to leeward in a singlehandedly to put it off and on again might be fun to watch

Is that the lever the Contenders use, it's only on things like a dead run in light conditions so I can get the boom out to the max, good to hear it's a 'thing' and not one of my nutter moments.

Oh and thanks for all this, it's one of the really good points of this forum, all this experience wasting away in front of computer screens..

Edited by iGRF - 19 Apr 21 at 12:10pm

Things like Albacores have pulley systems on the shrouds so you can adjust the tension by pulling string rather than trying to lose the tips of your fingers with a Highfield lever. I suspect you could double that up with a track like the Tasar as well to give you all the adjustment you could wish for, well until it all comes off in one go and your mast jumps off the foot and punctures a hole in the deck that is.

Originally posted by patj Grf you'd love the shroud fixings on our old Albacore - two hooks just below the side decks onto which the eyes on the shroud ends fit - so easy to set up. The hooks are on top of muscle boxes which have lines out to cleats so are held under tension and can't slip out. And above the decks in the shrouds are shroud levers - flip up to release, pull down and lock before rounding the leeward mark.I find the levers easier to operate than the rope version on the newer Albs, possibly because of the positioning.

Sounds cool, all these great ideas, all on different classes, imagine if there weren't fixed class rules eveerybody could enjoy all the good things in some sense of uniformity and wouldn't the pricing have fallen if everyone started using similar stuff, you know like even the holes in the chain plates being the same diameter might have helped.

Were Albacore a big deal? Like back in whatever day? Genuine question, I wasn't really that around and other than 505s, Scorpions and GP14s (because their owners were so tight when they came into the old Racing Sailboat shop we took over and nobody wanted to serve them) I didn't know a great deal about what was going on in the seventies when I guess they were big.