J24 Blog

*1) Jib* – Inducing twist to the jib on Sunday was definitely correct. However the jury is split on the trim of the jib. Some of the top boats actually had the jib sheeted out to just outside the spreaders . I do not think we (djinn) ever had it outside the spreaders, but we did have it in tight and neither worked very well. Perhaps out to the spreaders is the way to go and/or something to try for next time.

*2) Vang* – As much a I wanted to stress the vang on Sunday, I think I still underestimated it. The amount of vang required to keep the main flat is intense, which is why some boats blew out their vangs altogether.
Equipment issue: Not enough purchase to put it on tight. Not properly rigged to blow it easily if needed. UPGRADE YOUR VANGS TO MAXIMUM PURCHASE ALLOWED BY CLASS RULES.

*3) Downwind spinnaker* – Definitely my weakest point. One of my constant fears is accidentally gybing caused by the action of the waves. After just a minute of talking through my fears, I realized that accidentally gybing the main in heavy air is not going to easily happen under spinnaker. It’s hard enough to gybe the main even when we _WANT_ to gybe, because the main is pinned against the shrouds.

Being by-the-lee a bit or being dead downwind for the entire run and getting pushed by waves isn’t going to do anything to move the main. So, then the question becomes how to control the rolls, and the answer is moving weight back in the boat. We should have had everyone much further back, and we should have been twinging in hard on both sites to better control the kite.
Equipment issue: Twingers rigged aft instead of having their own cleats near the beam. The rear cleats are too crowded..twingers get in way of spinnaker trim.

… More in Part 2…

The bowman on a J24 is a tough job. The bowman on OUR J24 is a really tough job.

It’s getting slightly easier this week.

We’re been heading down the path of upgrading our spinnaker pole with either a tapered carbon fiber, or more likely a tapered aluminum pole. We’ve been sailing with the original non-tapered aluminum pole with bridles. The goal for us right now is to get rid of the bridles.

When the pole is up and the spinnaker is flying, the top and bottom triangles formed by the bridles creates a huge obstacle to moving cleanly across the deck to deal with any tangles, or hourglassed sail. Then when the pole is down the bridles always seem to twist themselves around the pole and make it difficult to trigger the ends to release.

We’ve tested having the bridles taped down to the pole and using it like a center-attachment pole, but it got a bit dicey in some higher wind conditions last year. The front tip of the pole was flexing at least 5 inches up, threatening to break the pole during a reach. So we’re going with a different approach for the short term that we found recommended online.

We’ve replaced the loose, floppy wire bridles, with some high tech low-stretch cord pulled very tight up against the pole. That way there is just enough stretch to allow the bridle to carry the load appropriately for the pole design, but with a much smaller triangle effect. Plus, once the pole is released and back down to the deck, the bridles snug up right against the length of the pole instead of flopping and tangling on the deck.

We test drove it in the last two weeks (including the 20+ knots evening) with the wire bridles still on, but taped up to the pole and the second set of rope bridles carrying all the load. It worked well, so the wires have now been cut off.

The pole is now lighter, easier to use, and saved us from having to spend $400+ bucks.

I think we’re probably good for another season, or until the bowman / trimmer / driver improve enough that the equipment becomes and isssue.

When we bought our J24 it had been abandoned in the Seattle Parks and Rec Marina at Leschi for a few years. The city periodically auctions off boats that haven’t paid their moorage to try to clear out the debt, and we were lucky enough (It felt like it at the time anyway…) to find this J24 listed on eBay, where pretty much no one buys one-design boats, and got a good price on it. When we went down to see it, the boat had a generous share of mold, dirt, and bird crap caked on even after the marina had pressure washed it for the sale. Of course we optimistically saw through all that and envisioned surging to top finishes in the local Tuesday night one-design series that we had previously crewed in.

After buying it we gave the deck and cabin a thorough scrub out with cleaner to de-must the boat and to start the process of breathing some life back into it.

A former owner had decided to paint the deck with a green epoxy coat to make a nice green color theme for the boat. They had managed to apply the first of what probably required several coats to a random 3 foot blob-shaped section of the foredeck before giving up. This left the boat with a transparent dark green swirled splotch on the deck that looked like toxic waste. Nice. It turns out that our boat was pretty well known in our local fleet because it was always easy to identify by that dark green splotch. Later, after our first season of racing we repainted the deck, and for a while no one recognized us. They thought some ringers had brought a new boat to the area. Ok, not ringers… They realized it was us after seeing our sailing performance.

The boat also featured:

Running rigging that was crusty where it wasn’t moldy

The remaining sticky-back portion of a weathered away hull number from a long ago regatta gracing the bows

Every race boat’s favorite one-design optimal “Lines led aft” configuration allowing maximum tripping hazard for minimum ease of raising and lowering the sails.

Half wire halyards. The other half was rotten rope.

Cabin top winches that hadn’t been serviced in years, and conveniently needed a different gauge winch handle than the primaries.

Old bulkhead compass in the cockpit with the reader card jammed sideways in the globe and half the oil drained out.

A port-a-potty. Remember this had been sealed inside a closed cabin for years of hot sun and cold winters. All I remember now is that it definitely didn’t feel empty when we lifted it off the boat, and unceremoniously walked it immediately to the dumpster.

2-3 inches of salad growing on the hull below the waterline. We trusted that their was indeed a bottom in there somewhere.

We initially just replaced the main sheet, genoa sheet and started sailing the boat on Tuesday nights for practice. We would sail around the outside of the area where the one-design fleets were racing and watch and practice handling our boat. We spent the rest of that summer sailing and cruising at least once a week, getting plenty of use out of the boat, and with no idea how very little we were actually preparing ourselves for the boat prep and learning curve that we’d face in racing the boat.

It had a complete set of sails on board including one ancient and one slightly newer spinnaker. The condition of the main and genoa were what you might call “cruising” quality. Soft and dirty and bagged-out from (literally) decades of use might be another way to describe them. That fact did not stop us from deciding to register to compete in the Tuesday night racing series with these sail the next summer.

Rapid escalation in boat optimization, deck layout, handling, and crew work in the next installment…

We’re ready to disassemble the boom, shake out the several decades of dirt and spider-webs that must be sealed inside, and re-build our mainsail outhaul. The class regs allow up to a 6:1 outhaul purchase. I’m fairly certain that ours is still the stock 2:1. At any rate, the rope portion of the line that exits midboom for cleating is so worn it looks like an old clothes line. It’s seriously overdue for replacement.

We had planned to buy the outhaul replacement kit from Annapolis Performance Sailing, or just buy the same parts from Fisheries Supply or West Marine locally. The kit comes with all the parts and line you need and 3 of the 4 swages completed. The last swage connects the wire to the shackle end after it passes through the sheave-box on the end of the boom, so it must be done as the last step of installation. This means that buying or borrowing a swaging tool…

I sent and email to our fleet listserv and got back some offers to lend swaging tools, but more importantly, got some guidance on upgrading the outhaul to an all-rope system and eliminating the wire portions all together. 3 different replies came in from top boats in our fleet with the same recommendation: go with the high tech ropes, get all the wire that isn’t required by the class off your boat. One recommendation even eliminated the shackle – they just tie the end of the outhaul line into the sail with a bowline. That is serious go-fast mode.

My new plan is to buy the couple of double and triple blocks needed, then construct the rest from rope. I’ll probably go with knots to ensure that I can get all the lengths right, and decide later if we should pay a rigger to go with splices instead.

The intended shopping list is:

• Harken H227
• Harken H228
• About 35′ of 1/4″ line with a poly jacket that will be the cleating end that also runs through the block system inside the boom
• About 10′ of 1/8″ 12 braid line from which I’ll make the two different portions
• An 18″ pennant that runs from the sail shackle, through the sheave and connects to the block system inside the boom, and
• A 5 1/2′ section that connects the block system inside the boom to it’s anchor point inside the gooseneck

I’m hoping to get it all assembled and installed this weekend. We’ll see how it works in next Tuesday night’s race.