Has anyone seen the May / June issue of Wooden Boat. I was intrigued by a picture of a mast using spectra strops in the place of mast hoops. I googled them and found a few references to spectra strops, but not any info on where you might buy them. They look like a very effective and easy to replace.
Mast "gaskets" are a fairly common way to tie a sail to a stick. They work very well, chafe less then hoops or beads and most importantly are adjustable. Spectra is the coolest of the new materials to come out. It's light, very strong and best of all, it's not expensive. Racers have been using this stuff to replace about every "hard point" on the rig, from stay tangs to headboard shackles. You can shave a lot of weight off the rig with this stuff, especially if your standing rig is spectra. Stretch rivals that of steel, so no more wire halyards, etc.
Wow! Sounds like a "wonder" cure. Where can you find this stuff? I noticed in the article that they emphasized that these strops are adjustable. I can't see it well enough in the photo to tell how they do that. My guess is that easy adjustments are a good selling point too.
I'm assuming because the lines are tied, they can be untied, adjusted and re-tied. There are several knots that will allow easy adjustment, without full disassembly.
Spectra on a gaffer has limited usefulness. This is mostly because folks are interested in the charm of the vessel, more then performance. Weight reduction in the rig will make substantial changes to performance, but it must be in concert with several other options, such as windage reduction, sail shape controls, light weight spars, etc.
In other words, removing a few pounds of stainless from a low aspect gaffer, that still employs solid spars, gasket luffs, lased gaffs, bull dog clamped shrouds and stays, will make very little difference in boat speed. It will be a measurable difference, but you'll need a calculator to figure out what fraction of a knot improvement you've gotten.
I'm mostly interested in an alternative to steam bending wooden hoops or using plastic PVC pipes. In the article where I saw the spectra in use, it was indeed about weight reduction up on deck. They used a carbon comp mast along with the strops to gain significant weight reduction. It's an article about a boat called the Maggie B. Here's a link to a website on her:http://schoonermaggieb.net/category/building-maggie-b/.
In light of what you're saying, it would appear that you could use hoops made of rope for our boats. It seems to me that hoops would allow for an easier time of lowering the sail than the lashing that I currently have. My sail goes up and down OK, but I believe I could improve the rig for a little easier time of it. I have to tug a good bit to get the sail to come down. The weight of the gaff doesn't really help very much. For me, it's not really about weight reduction as it is a "effort reduction" on my part. Laziness compels me to reduce all work as much as possible.
Hoops can bind as they come down, lacing can too, but not as often as hoops. Some are using beads which has the potential of easing friction substantially, but at the cost of more mast chafe and noise. Gaskets can also bind as the sail is doused, about as much as lacing would. It helps if there is a line attached to each gasket (or hoop) on the forward side of the mast. This keeps them spaced evenly and doesn't let one or two of them get too far off horizontal, b efore the weight of the sail can yank them down.
This is something the old timers would cuss about and slap lots of grease on the mast to solve. Since most of us wouldn't want a greasy mast, we must resort to other things. Sail tracks, bolt rope grooves and sock luffs solve this problem well, but lack the charm of hoops.
I've been very busy the past couple of weeks. I got to thinking a lot about hoops and decided that for the kind of sailing I do, I could probably make my hoops out of rope. I got some three strand nylon rope, put in eye splices in one end, passed them through the grommets and tied a simple overhand knot on the other side to keep them from rotating at the luff of the sail. I then ran them around the mast and tied with a double beckett. I also tied off the forward sides to keep them more or less horizontal. In trials they seem to be working fine. I'll be taking her out for a camping trip this weekend and we'll see how it goes. As long as I remember to push everything up past the tabernacle before raising the sails, they work fine. The only binding problem I see is when a hoop is below the tabernacle. I'll try to get some pics this weekend.
I've also been moving some deck hardware. Originally I had my cam cleats for the halyards and jib back to about the middle of the cockpit. The reasoning was that I knew there was a piece of 1x underneath the deck for joining two sections. This proved to be very problematic when pulling the halyards, especially. I now have moved these items up to the bulkhead and I'm pretty sure the new location will be much more comfortable. I've also run the jib halyard back to the top of the cabin along with a downhaul, which is just tied off on the deck. That also has been working well so far. What I'm hoping for this weekend will be to easily raise and lower the sail and jib from the cockpit.