Grant's Tip of the Day- Handling the Lazy Jacks on a charter yacht

by Grant Headifen on 20 Apr 2010 Traditional mainsails are rigged on about 60-70% of most charter boats and are most commonly flaked along the boom when not in use. Lazy Jacks are lines extending from about 1/3 or 1/2 way up the mast down to various positions along the boom, and they are most useful for short-handed sailing.

These are a great invention. They automatically envelope the sail side to side as it comes down into a Stac Pack. This is a giant sail cover already positioned on top of the boom. This makes lowering the mainsail quite simple.

With the boat pointing in an upwind direction and two wraps of the halyard around the winch just release the halyard clutch and let the mainsail lower into the Stac Pac.

Here’s a trick that we always do for safety.

With a sudden and unexpected high wind gust, the sail can be blown up and out of the Stac Pac. This is potentially dangerous and could pull you off the anchorage etc. To prevent this you can either zip up the Stac Pac to prevent the sail from deploying (this is difficult and time consuming) or you can reach up and grab the halyard close to the head of the sail and then pull it down to wrap under the halyard winch or a mast mounted cleat then close the halyard clutch and tighten the halyard.

This serves to pull the sail down and lock it down.

To hoist the traditional main sail, first open the Stac Pac or unhook the halyard from the winch (as showing in the image).

Now remember how I said lazy jacks are a great invention? This is where you might have a sailors mouth. Lazy Jacks always snag the battens at the leech of the sail. Always – every time – with out fail!

So don’t just keep winching the halyard up, the lazy jacks ARE going to snag. A couple of tricks we've learned here.

Have a good helmsman to steer the boat constantly and accurately into the wind. Have one person hoisting the sail while keeping a watch on the lazy jacks and battens and have one more person maneuvering the boom to port or starboard to prevent the snagging and at the same time calling to the hoister to go up or let down.

This problem is especially prevalent on catamarans. If you have lazy jacks on your own boat, attach bungee cords from the spreaders to the lazy jacks. This tends to pull the lazy jacks out wider and reduce the chance of snagging.

One more thing that tends to get snagged on the way up are the reefing lines. Inside the boom at the front of the boom are clutches that grab the reefing lines. Ensure that these don’t lock as you hoist the main.

This tip came from Grant Headifen, www.nauticed.org!NauticEd's Education Director