Adjustable Bowsprit...

[OSC007]

I am playing with the bowsprit and put together a cascade with some low friction rings.
I now have a line running back in a clutch (using the 3 reef clutch instead of adding one).

I have seen pretty much all boats before the Mini Transat with adjustable bowsprit height. It makes sense, although I am not very keen in having another line to play with.

Has anyone better photos of how it runs back to the cockpit? I don't want to run the line into a fair lead on the deck as I imagine the load up will be crazy. How is it done on other boats? I guess it might be fine to have a line, maybe 3 inches off the deck (mostly forward of the mast) when the bow sprit is out.

Also, would any of you use low friction rings at the bast of the masts for halyards, vang,...? I am tempted to give it a shot. Besides weight, these are also a lot cheaper than regular blocks, and will most likely break less.

Any suggestions, comments, photos are welcome.

Cheers

Jerome

[Bruce]

Hi Jerome,

No photos, but I have the same system - I just used normal hard eyes for eye-splices rather than Antal rings.

The final part of the cascade is 3 mm dyneema which is too small and slippery to hold in anything, so I ran it from the base of the forestay through a fair lead on deck (next to the tack line fair lead).  At the mast I tied it to a piece of 6 mm with a cover (splicing would be more elegant, but I never got around to it), which I then took to a (new) cam cleat on the cabin top.

Load is not enormous as you consider that each time you take it through a cascade you cut the load in half.  Even if the load is 1 tonne at the pole end, three cascades will bring the load down to 125 kg.  I couldn't pull the pole down with the tail when it was heavily loaded, but I could easily ease it gently by hand without putting it around a winch.

[Stubby]

Also, would any of you use low friction rings at the bast of the masts for halyards, vang,...? I am tempted to give it a shot. Besides weight, these are also a lot cheaper than regular blocks, and will most likely break less.

What about this?  Anybody have this?

[Bruce]

I think I've seen low-friction rings at the base of the mast instead of blocks, but not 100% sure.  Some new protos seem to have no blocks at all, only low-friction rings.

[Florian]

Hi, I used friction rings on my boat. Worked fine for me, not much difference with blocks and I didn't break them ;)
For one season I did not see significant wear on the halyards but it might wear them out a bit faster.

[alexandrerua]

HI

I recentl bought an old COCO and trying to implement an orientable/adjustable bowsprit, can you send me fotos of your system, particularly the end that ataches to de bow/forestay/balcon.

Thank you

[OSC007]

I will send you an email with photos of the Pogo 2 bowsprit set up.

Cheers

Jerome