Dear Joan

Firstly, may I apologise for ‘hogging’ the last magazine! Going back to my article on Cobweb, I have made a few mods since that was written, and perhaps I could mention these briefly:

1 Keeping the boom jaws against the mast. I saw the answer on a Mirror dinghy’s gaff jaws — to use elastic shock cord. It’s not marline spike stuff, but is so simple and easy. Just make a loop of shock cord, overlapping the ends and seizing them together. This is then fixed to the outside of one side of the jaws with a brass ‘bridging piece’. On the outside of the other jaw, you fix a lacing hook — the sort you put along your boat just below the gun’l to hook the boat cover elastic to. Then all you do when the jaws are against the mast is to stretch (only slightly) the elastic around the front and put it over the hook and it can be released in a second. Why didn’t I think if it before!

2 Jib and mainsheet halyard cleats — I chanced upon a pair of bronze ones slightly bigger than my existing galvanised ones, which are both nicer and give more ‘horn’ to hang the rope coils on. However I took the opportunity to fit mahogany ‘pads’ under these, about an inch thick and about ¼” bigger than the base plate of the cleat. Long screws went straight through the pad and into the mast. Apart from hanging the coils better, it also takes the halyards away from the side of the mast just enough to stop them fouling against the outside of the boom jaws.

3 Mainsheet — you’ve heard of twin keels, twin jibs, twin rudders and so on, but have you heard of twin mainsheets? I think I may have just invented them, but I can’t honestly believe that if they are any good, someone wouldn’t have thought of it umpteen years ago. I have rigged twin sheets, each going from a rope becket (use a sheet bend or double s/b) on a single block secured through the transom knee, up and through one sheave of a double block suspended below the boom, down through the quarter block and either to hand if it is the ‘active’ sheet or onto the seat if it’s not. Why bother? The main and probably only advantage is that the ‘pull’ is from the windward quarter, which pulls the boom more towards the centre of the boat when close hauled — rather like those posher dinghies which have a track across the transom so that you can adjust the position of the block to suit. The drawbacks are that you need a lot of string to allow for the boom being right out on either side, and it might get either confusing or muddled (or both) with all that sheet. I’ve tried it for a bit of fun and it worked fairly well, but the spare sheet I used was a different colour and the wind was quite light; it could be very different in a good blow. It keeps the grey matter ticking over and has others puzzled! Graham Wadeson