Gin Pole

Considering making a gin pole to assist in raising and lowering the mast. Has anyone done so for their Laser? If so could you please share some ideas on materials, length and setup. Thanks.

It would be helpful to know how you do that, I don't have to put mine down every year but this is a show stopper for me traveling - if there was a better way please share with those of us who don't know (okay, with me!).  :)bill

In historic Laser 28 history there is an article as to how to do this, but I will outline it since it is simple. Let's start with the take-down.

1. Firstly, for anything you do with that mast on top of the boat you must build a small "H" cradle, perhaps out of 2x4, which just consists of two verticals ob about 4' long, with a horizontal about 8-10" from the top to hold the mast when down. It helps to use a small square of plywood, say 3/8" nailed or screwed onto the two verticals just below the cross piece to stabilize this frame so that it does not fall into a parallelogram. This frame gets lashed to the push-pit and the bottom of the 2x4's sit on the little rear deck either side of the tiller head. This cradle is required because without it you cannot lay the mast down because it will destroy the coach-top and any vent you may have there, and you need this cradle from traveling anyway.
2. Fix a snatch block onto the spinnaker pole lashing it through the end beak. If you don't have a snatch block, then use a heavy duty stainless steel ring and clip it into the end of the pole. Now mount the pole onto the mast and stabilize it perpendicular to the mast just as though you were gong to hoist the kite with uphaul and downhaul.
3. Run the spinnaker halyard down through the block or ring and clip it onto the tack ring where your jib attaches.
4. Take one of the jib halyards and run it down straight to the front of the boat and attach it to the same place or any strong point (could be the anchor cleat.
5. Lead both halyards around winches and secure. They are not acting as forestays which allow you to detatch your forestay, which you will do now.
6. Be sure that all you mast wiring is detatched, and I would loosen the shrouds, counting the number of turns you back them off and write that down.
7. With a person on each winch, you can now start letting out on the halyards and lowering the mast to the back. I presume the boat is in the water and you must be in dead smooth water with no wakes around. This is because once the mast is down a few feet, there is no athwartship stability and you don't want the boat rocking about. Just easy off both halyards slowly. As the mast tips back, the tension on the halyards becomes high. Toward the end it becomes very high. At this point you have two choices which are of help. You It is perfect if you have places a piece of say 3/4" ply across the cockpit seats so that one person can stand on these and receive the mast and take up its weight and eventually help lay it in the cradle. Another way is to have some sort of yoke arranged on the end of a pole that will capture the mast and allow the helper to relieve the weight. The mast just is lowered into the weighting cradle.
Note: Do not forget to disconnect the mast wiring. The boom must have been removed. The hold-down nuts at the mast base must be removed so that the mast can tip back on its swing pin.

Putting the mast up is a reversal of this process. The reason I specify a snatch block or a heavy ring at the pole end is because if you run the halyard through the pole's end fitting, it has to bend around the piston and through the beak which induces huge friction. You can do it this way and it is not very critical on lowering, but lifting is made easier using my method.

Last comment. If you have a couple of spare people, you can attach a rope through your second jib halyard fitting sufficiently long that it leads down both sides of the boat. The two spare people can then hold each end of that rope while standing either on a dock either side of the boat, or on the boats extreme gunwhale. By handling these lines they can add athwartship stability during lowering, but they must be careful not not put tension in those lines which will add to the tension on the halyards. They can just gently handle them so that the mast does not swing from side to side.

Good Luck.

I heard of using a spinnaker pole for the Gin Pole, and your description make sense. Just want to check on two things, does the spinnaker halyard place enough tension on the pole to keep the pole from swinging side to side? And are you using the winches on the cabin top, or the 2 speed in the cockpit?

Thanks

A good argument for a bowsprit, as ours gives a good angle. I guess you are best to be about 6" forward of the bow. We quite often "Iwo Jima" our mast,my only comments would be that you must use a strong block and not a ring to grind the mast vertical. The friction without a block is too much to overcome. I usually just use a normal closed cheek block and secure a rope onto the forstay about 2ft up using clove hitches and multiple half hitches to get the angle right.

Although a little frame to rest the mast on and not damage the cabin top would be ideal, we usually just put a fender underneath plus a few people to lower her down gently.

Watch for trapping the wires under the mast foot, we've done that but found the extra rake the "shim" gave us was very fast!

Performance wise I guess not much gain other than the simplicity and higher angle when reaching. Our gain on triangular courses is that we can gybe the ayso very easily when others are fighting their poles, the downside of this is windshifts or tactical mistakes which mean that we are flying the wrong type of spinnaker. Going deep on the ayso is painful unless in high winds.
The other advantage is that we now have an Ullman S2 kite i.e deep downwind shaped. You can't reach on this but it is more powerful on deep runs, somewhere we thought the Laser 28 is under gunned in mixed handicap fleets. At 46m2 I think this is still smaller than the class kite but the shape is better than the AP for downwind.
But this thread was about a gin pole......

frfletch wrote: 1. Firstly, for anything you do with that mast on top of the boat you must build a small "H" cradle, perhaps out of 2x4, which just consists of two verticals ob about 4' long, with a horizontal about 8-10" from the top to hold the mast when down. It helps to use a small square of plywood, say 3/8" nailed or screwed onto the two verticals just below the cross piece to stabilize this frame so that it does not fall into a parallelogram. This frame gets lashed to the push-pit and the bottom of the 2x4's sit on the little rear deck either side of the tiller head. This cradle is required because without it you cannot lay the mast down because it will destroy the coach-top and any vent you may have there, and you need this cradle from traveling anyway.

When I did this (I've only done it one time) I used a 6 ft stepladder in the cockpit, lashed down so it's pretty stable. The mast sits there without hurting the cabin top. Climb the ladder as much as you dare to catch the mast as it comes down.

frfletch wrote: 2. Fix a snatch block onto the spinnaker pole lashing it through the end beak. If you don't have a snatch block, then use a heavy duty stainless steel ring and clip it into the end of the pole. Now mount the pole onto the mast and stabilize it perpendicular to the mast just as though you were gong to hoist the kite with uphaul and downhaul.

Does your pole downhaul go to the mast base so the pole and mast pivot together?

On Mad Max we use a little different set up which requires 3 people.

Mike,

Where on the mast does the "shoe" fit and how is it fixed. Does the mast raise also happen with this set-up as easy as the lowering? I can see there would be a lot less effort loss in the compression caused by using halyards for raising and lowering.

Looking forward to the pics!