Matt Waite wrote:

Just got back from our first sail aboard Mariposa; a quick potter around Plymouth Sound.

I have no sheets running to the top two battens, and the sail did like to get a good twist going. I yanked and fiddled with the sheets, but the sheeting arrangement seems to allow the higher battens to fall to leeward, with a subsequent tightening of the lower sheet spans.

If you look at PJR, you will see that there are several choices when it comes to sheeting the sail.  You might find that if you re-rig the sheet, you can put a larger amount of pull at the top of the sail to reduce the twisting.  Of course, in certain cases twist in the sail is considered to help the boat make to windward.  It depends on the type of sail.  As yours doesn't appear to be fanned, you might have more success re-reeving the sheet.  However, with two reefs in F3, you wouldn't really expect the boat to point to her maximum potential.  From my experience, junk rig is the only rig where you tend to shake reefs out when coming hard on the wind.  They - usually - need all the drive they can get.

When you post on fora, it's better not to put photos directly into the posting: Wild Apricot gives us a limited amount of data and photos use it up.  Far better to post any photos under your profile in an Album.  (Go into Edit profile at the top right of the screen, then to photo albums and create one).  This makes it easier for readers to find, too, if they read the relevant posting a long time after the event.  Even under Illustrations in the Technical Forum, photos tend to 'disappear' as they get older and older.  

I'm looking forward to hearing about the junket in Brittany.  You will be able to pick some experienced brains there!

Thanks Arne. You're right - it's pasting in pictures that causes lines to expand beyond the frames. That's one of the reasons why David T added a an 'Illustrations' section to the Technical Forum. No help here of course. The best way to deal with this is to put images in your personal image area and link to them. When I wrote that the text problem was mentioned in Help I was wrong. Memory, eh? Looking through the Help section with my ex-Webmaster's hat half on, it could do with a look at for that reason and following the recent WA upgrade.

Hi Matt

Congrats on your first sail.

The yard hauling parrel should be attached to the yard about half way along, then go round the front of the mast from port to starboard, then back towards where it started from. You need a block - non swivel is fine - at that point to starboard of the line's attachment point. Shove the rope through the block from top to bottom, then take it  down to the deck inside the lazy jacks, then to a swivel block at the bottom starboard side of the mast then back to the cockpit. If it's sticky round the mast, check the routing and then try a a more slippery rope.

Re the sheetlets, you perhaps need to extend the second batten backwards so that you can start the sheet there. This will give you control of the second batten. The first batten isn't usually sheeted. If you're ever reefed down to one panel the boom and other battens take the strain.

Incidentally your text spills outside the right hand side of the frame on my laptop. Perhaps you pasted in from Word. It's best to paste from a text editor such as Notepad. I'm going to do that now - fingers crossed. This is mentioned on our Help page. [Later edit: no it isn't. See my later post.]

All the best Mr Junkie and hope to see you in Brest the second week of June. Chris Gallienne is hoping to turn up, and Paul Fay will already be up one of the rivers, and Maddy and I will be in Marina du Chateau with Paradox. So this will be the first French junket. Of course you knew all that because we're in touch by email. I just thought I'd mention it for the benefit of anyone else who is crossing the Channel soon too. For the record it's not an official JRA event and isn't organised by the JRA. It's just a few members doing their thing. Our Sailing Secretary Ash plans to email French members soon. Best wishes.