420 kicking strap

That's a good start. For an entry level kicking strap I'd buy one more block, and make it a strong one, say an Allen A2030HL, plus you need some good quality rope, say Marlow Excel Racing, and lets say 6mm. In an ideal world you'd splice the ropes, but lets not get that complicated yet.

The A230HL goes onto the boom with your biggest forged shackle (the forged shackles are the ones with a circular cross section, not flat plate).

Another forged shackle goes on the upper mast fitting.

The block with the swivel goes on the lower mast fitting.

Cut a piece of the XL racing that is lets say 6 inches longer than twice the distance between mast and boom, and loop it through the shackle on the mast and pass the ends through the loop. You'll see this described as a crows foot knot.

One loose end goes up, through the 2030HL, and then tie a bowline in the end and thread another of your forged shackles into the loop. Make the loop nice and small. Pin your block and becket holt block onto the shackle.

The other loose end goes round the pulley, ties of in another bowline, and another forged shackle. Put the remaining block on that. Now take the rest of the rope, tie one end onto the forged shackle on the mast beside the crows foot know with a bowline. Run it through the third block, back round the swivel block on the mast and along to your cleat.

What you end up with should look a lot like that P&B photo, but the rope will be a bit thicker.

You want to know how much rope to buy! Well, I can't tell you, but if you mock it up with string you should get close. You need the ropes long enough that you can pull the sail up without the boom stopping you, and short enough that you can pull the kicker on enough without running out of travel.

This is a cascade setup. Its big virtue is you get lots of power (8:1 this is which should be enough for recreational sailing) without spending too much on fittings. The downside is that it often ends up with a lot of fiddling to get the rope lengths right, because too long is as bad as too short.

There are more sophisticated ways to do this, involving splicing ropes rather than knots, which will give a nicer result, but I think the above is a reasonable start. Most clubs will have people who will help you out with the fine tuning of something like this.





Edited by JimC - 15 Nov 15 at 8:22pm