Currently racing my restored "starkers" with a home made set of A sails on a swing rig while I await delivery of a decent suit.

However I have two very nice Sails etc B shroudless sets of sails: one main with a pocket luff 1845 X 370 and another eyelet main 1800 X 340.

Ignoring the slight difference in area; what are the views on the use of pocket luff mains and, given the choice, which one gets the vote to rig ?

Richard

From what I can gather, most of the fast folk use pocket luff for everything except A rig...

That is interesting Mike. I know you use them on Moths and multis.

All my experience of pocket luffs and wings has been on full size. While I like the look of the pocket luff B main that I have; it seems more logical to be applied to the swing rig. Also would not then require the pocket "hinge" that the fixed mast necessitates.

I am sure you have all been here already on the Marblehead so do not want to re invent the wheel, but why are they not used for the swing A ?

Richard

I actually question whether they're good at all at model scale - I'm going with them because thats what everyone does and while evaluating my hull designs it would be silly to mess around with non-standard rigs.

Hi Richard,

Whilst not a rig guru, my guess is that most (not all!) swing rigs sit on a heavily bent mast and getting a pocket cut to suit that bend would be rather time consuming. Also if you wished to de-power the rig by bending it some more via the back stay then it might simply bend within the pocket and not actually de-power the rig.. most pocket luff mains I see are shroudless conventional rigs, not swing rigs. The expection for bent mast swing rigs are the stollery type and they do utilise pocket luff mains for the lower rigs where the extra weight of the cloth is not a ‘penalty’.

Good to chat, hope this helps..