Boat trailer extension bar

After having my car sliding from a slippery ramp half into the water I thought it was time to make a trailer extension to be able to get only the trailer and not the car in the water.

It's put together with some galvanized steel square tube and an extra trailer hitch ball.

The extension has a reces at the far end which slides over a bolt in the tongue-assembly (the bolt is the rusty bolt near the parking-brake-lever). The extension bar locks on the ball by just lifting up the car-end of the extension.

To carry the extension there is a ball on the trailer and a u-frame on the first crossbar: the back end of the extension lies in the u-frame and the front end is fixed by clicking it on the ball.

It works, although I always find the forces on this kind of equipment a bit daunting. Especially when the trailer is half way in the water and the back of the boat is already floating, the forces on the front end of the trailer which carry the rest of the weight of the boat must be quite high.

Next: antifouling with finsulate wrap.

Square top mainsail - top batten trick

Until recently I always had to put in or remove the top batten of the mainsail when hoisting and dropping the mainsail. On internet I found a very easy solution to keep the batten in the sail.
The trick is to not fix the top of the sail permanently to the top slider, but to make a tackle with dyneema with one end fixed to one of the lower sliders. Pictures are probably better than words, so....

Once the mainsail is raised and the distance between the lower sliders and the topslider increases, the tackle is tensioned and the top of the sail is fixed to the topslider.

sail down

starting the hoist: lo and behold it works



Tackle is tightening and will be tight with sail hoisted about two meters.

First I had doubts it would work, but at least for my size of sail it does.
The dyneema rope is slippery enough to not get stuck and the topslider doesn't get stuck either.


By the way: the top block on the mainsail is a climbing block: very strong, light and durable and way cheaper than sailing-blocks.


Next post: trailer-extension

New anti-torsion cable - PERFECT!

The standard anti-torsion rope on my jib has never impressed me much. Especially with a lot of wind, when you need it to work, it doesn't. The top of the jib would not furl because the line was not stiff enough (and probably because there is relatively little tension on the anti-torsion line compared to fixed mast-boats).

Old anti-torsion Rope

I replaced the line with Harken Reflex anti torsion rope. This rope is a normal anti-torsion rope but with a braided stainless steel cover round that rope. What a difference! I am usually a bit sceptical about claims of new products, but this works perfect for my setup.


Harken Reflex Rope

The rope can be bought with expensive end-terminals, but I made them very cheap with aluminium press-sleeves, just for the fun of trying to replace some stuff with diy-parts.

Here is a test-piece with a normal alu press-sleeve I used:

 

Unlike the official terminals it is a permanent fix: to remove the sleeve it has to be carefully cut into multiple pieces:

For extra security i tapped some m5 machine screws into the press sleeve to further lock the cable, but in hindsight this is overkill.

My cheap trick to press the sleeves, step 1: put sleeve in a vice with to big steel nails as 'press die' to (pre)form the sleeve.

My cheap trick to press the sleeves, step 2: use some threaded rod, some steel bar, a small hydraulic jack and again a steel nail to get some real pressure on the the already preformed sleeve:

 

Next post: mainsail top batten-tackle....