I ordered some 8mm 'anti torsion rope' at www.allspars.co.uk. It took them ages to send the rope (and they sent it to the wrong address), but in the end it arrived.
This stuff is really stiff. It's a sort of bundle UD (believe it's kevlar) with a normal mantle.
My sailmaker replaced the wire of the luff of my jib with the anti-torsion rope and at the same time shortened the luff a bit (the luff was a bit too long - with the roller in place I couldn't hoist the jib properly).Big succes! The jib now furls with no problem, even with a lot of wind. That's a relief as I wasn't really pleased - understatement - with the hank-on setup. Probably OK for racing, but not for cruising.
Because I have no pulpit I needed something else to put the mast on while trailering. I welded a sort of aluminium 'fork' and made a flanged insert of a piece of PVC-pipe and a brace made of wood.
Below the setup: the insert is on the foredeck and when trailering I can just stick the fork into it. I still have to shorten the fork. Will do that when I've got the mast down. It will be easier to judge how long/short the fork should be. I'll try to make it as short as possible, so the forces on the fork and insert are as low as possible.
I also altered the setup of my halyards. My choise to keep all the halyards on the mast proved to be a mistake. Now both halyards are led back to the cockpit. It seems to work fine, although I'm a bit concerned it will inhibit mast rotation. The halyards exit the mast 2,5 meter above the deck, are led to two blocks at the base of the mast, and then run through an organiser. I'll add a picture of the setup later on.I put the organiser on a piece of perspex to lift it high enough for the halyards not to rub against the deck.
I also replaced the 'bare' dyneema sk75 halyards with dyneema rope with a mantle (will hold better in the stoppers) and made them 2:1 for less compression in the mast and easier hoisting. This also is an improvement. Downside is there's a lot of halyard in the cockpit. Below is my trick to attach rope to the mast: I make flanged bushes of HDPE to prevent chafe, put it the mast (flange inside of course), put a rope through and fix it with a double figure 8-knot. I also used those bushes to attach the line for the trampoline to the wall of the aft beam mount recess.
To prevent chafe of the jibsheets I glued a piece of pvc pipe cut into quarts to the cabin.
That's it for now. More to come within a few weeks.I'll be sailing a multihull race the weekend of 3/4 october and will certainly post about that weekend.(NOTE: the race was cancelled due to bad weather).
