Lazy Jacks

Zepher
Chris & Lyn Darch
Sun 21 Sep 2008 21:07
18:05.43S
170:20.88W
 
Hi Folks,
 
Wind rising all night we tried to put off reefing the main but as we approached 8knts on the stay sail and main we decided to reef to No 3 reef, a fundamental floor has show up during this exercise, lazy jacks caught on the flogging sail and ripped of there mounts , this is all at four thirty in the morning, spreader lights on, and reasonable vision on deck , when we got the sail into the reefed position and took up on the lazy jacks to contain the sail nothing happened as they were happily flapping there severed ends flying about like a merry go round, it was at that point that some eyelets along each reef line would have come in handy , with 20m of sail flapping wildly around like a demented tescos shopping bag in a windy car park we had to wrestle the beast and get as much tied off on we could, three of the jacks had held on one sail so we went onto the other tack and slowly bundled the sail into it getting the some ties over the sail and securing it this took us the best part of an hr , it confirms my inbuilt dislike of the lazy jack system and something that is definitely in the list of alterations in NZ , the list grows ... but these jacks have been on it from the beginning , fine on a smaller boat but these size of mains a no no as far as I am concerned .
Just to add to the above a few nice squalls came through as well just to add to the excitment .. wonderbar ....
 
 The upside is that we all  worked well again in a crisis and resolved the problem as it arose , this of course is the up side of a larger crew, but if it had been Lyn and myself on our own we would have reefed down the day before, just as we always do , the reef would have been executed  fine by the four of us with no problem but for the dreaded lazy Jacks ....
We are progressing well to Tonga and now only have 230 nm to run , we will have to slow down at some point to enter in Daylight , so as we shortened sail we put the extra reef in to keep the hull speed down, which should get us there by 5 o/c in the morning ready for first light .
 
All lazy jacked out ...
 
The soggy crew