Hauled ST. JACQUES out for a row and sail. The cover is working out nicely, held up for about a year now through a few tropical storms and lots of rain. We have rinsed it off once and it is keeping the inside of the boat clean and dry.
The sail and spars were stored outside the boat for a few days, they rewarded us by creating this beautiful "Bill Knot," a magic creation of unidentifiable origin consisting of the bridle, mainsheet and brailing line.
Some spritsail basics, the mast, sprit, sail and control lines. Peak of the sail is the peak, top forward corner is the throat, the bottom forward corner is the tack and lower aft corner is the clew. The upper spar is the sprit, hoisted up on the mast with a "snotter" line. There is also a thin "brailing line" running up to the top of the mast, around the leech of the sail and back to the top of the mast, it is used to collapse the sail and reduce sail area.
We can also secure the lower part of the sail with a sail tie. Our spritsail is lashed on with a marlin hitch in a permanent position, if we ever to reef it we would just roll up the foot to the reef points and not fiddle with lowering the throat, readjusting snotter etc...We would most likely brail the sail if needed, then maybe remove the sprit and "scandalize" the sail if we needed to reduce sail area fast. WOuldn't be pretty but it would get the sail area reduced.
Top of the sprit and an idea on how tight the brailing line secures the upper part of the sail.
Spritsail brailed and foot furled.
Video tour of the spritsail lines.
Miles rowed 1.5/Total 11.75
In case you missed it, We wrote an article on the Penobscot 14 for the January 2018 issue of Small Boats Monthly. SBM is the digital sister to WoodenBoat, they publish boat profiles, stories on reader built boats and gear reviews every month. Monthly subscriptions are $2.99 and yearly $29.99. Click here for the article.
Log of ST. JACQUES.
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