Greg,
Really enjoyed your videos; wish I had your camera talent. Over the years I have been to those harbors and continue to enjoy sailing Lake Michigan. Milwaukee is a nice harbor except for that tight fuel dock area.

Greg,

I just watched your first video, and enjoyed it very much.

It appears we have the same year boat.

I just purchased it, and still very much in the learning stage.

I noticed that you have a halyard attached to the end of your boom. I was under the impression that this set up does not use a topping lift. What purpose does this halyard serve?

Wonderful, thanks.

For those of us who singlehand a lot, notice that Greg spends a LOT of time forward of the helm position.

Blair, and all. That's not a halyard. It is the topping lift, which on our boats with the rigid vang doesn't have a very important job. And it gets to goof off most of the time. On our boats that are so rigged, the topping lift does only one task: it tautens and slackens the Dutchman flaking. [I know 'tautens' isn't a real word, but it works here.]

For those not familiar with Dutchman flaking, it consists of two 'fishing lines' that run vertically through the sail. When the sail is dropped, the Dutchman lines help it to stack neatly on the top of the boom. A new sail rigged with the Dutchman lines will 'take a set', and after a few months when the sail is dropped it will flake alternately on top of the boom as if it was born to do so.

I have tied off my topping lift at the mast, thus freeing up a clutch for my vang, which for some reason had not been led back to the cockpit. (The vang is much more important than the topping lift.) I have instead rigged a small block and cam cleat at the boom end of the topping lift so that I can just reach up with one hand to tauten or slacken the topping lift when I want to raise or lower the sail. It works just fine.

For those new to the Dutchman: Tautening the topping lift tautens the Dutchman lines. The ONLY times the topping lift should be taut is when RAISING the sail or LOWERING the sail. Once the sail has been raised the Dutchman lines are slackened; and after the sail is down, the Dutchman lines are slackened. Therefore 99.999975% of the time the topping lift is slack.

Speaking of dutchman, our aft line broke this year and the front line looks ready to go as well. Does anyone know what weight of line this is? I think it is 400 lb based on the data on Dutchman's website but can anyone confirm that?

We temporarily replaced it with a piece of soft nylon cord and it worked OK for the duration of our cruise though the stretch in it caused some issues. Also, on older boats like our without a rigid vang the topping lift is only ever slack when we're sailing, other than that it is under load holding up the boom.

Those are great videos, makes me think we need 1./a cruising chute and 2./a new autopilot, that one makes the wheel pilot look silly.

I was advised to use heavy gauge weed wacker line; picked up a spool at the local Ace hardware. It's been on there several years. If you take a piece of the old line with you it's easy to get the right gauge.

When I single hand, I also let the autopilot do plenty of the work. I find the rest of my time is spent sitting at the back of the cockpit enjoying the view, or I sit up on the foredeck, against the mast.

Great video, solo sailing is a very personal thing, and I find very soothing for the soul.

Larry,

do you have a pic of your set up on the end of your boom?