We’ve had our new sails and Mack Pack mainsail cover for about a year now and absolutely love them. After using the 106% genoa last year, we decided to get a smaller yankee jib (about 85%). We had some issues using the larger genoa on the river where we sail. The wind is often flukey and light and the river is narrow so it involves a lot of tacking and gybing. The large genoa just wouldn’t pass through the slot unless the wind was up. Also, there can be a lot of traffic on the river and a smaller jib will give us better visibility. We figure we’ll get a lot of use out of the smaller jib while landbased, and use the genoa more consistently once water-based (is that a thing?)
Hanging the Sails
Once we finally had our sails, hanging them was pretty straightforward. Rich had to make a 27″ strop for tack of the staysail to attain full hoist. He made a soft shackle out of Dyneema.
We already had a halyard restrainer installed for the jib so all we had to do was feed it into the furling foil and hoist it up.
The mainsail should have been just as easy as the other two sails, but we managed to screw it up. There was a slight breeze while we were hoisting it and the luff rubbed on the spreaders and managed to shred a small section. When we saw the rip we had no idea how it happened until we watched the video of it. A quick trip to Quantum Sails in the Bay Area and we had it fixed.
Measuring for the Mack Pack
Our old mainsail cover was basically garbage when we bought the boat. It was a hideous brown color, was torn in several places, and was a pain to put on. We’d seen the mainsail covers that open from the top and the sail just falls into it effortlessly and knew our lazy selves needed that. There are a couple of companies who make them and we decided to go with Mack Sails from Florida. Mack Sails provides an ordering sheet with all the measurements you need to take so they can make your cover. Our halyard clutches are a little close to the edge of the mast so we had to take that into consideration.
Installing the Mack Pack and Lazy Jacks
After drilling and tapping the fasteners to the mast, putting the sail cover in place was easy. The Mack Sails website has thorough instructions on how to do this. Our mainsail is loose-footed so the cover uses the bolt rope groove in the boom. We also had to drill and tap some small pad eyes on the bottom of the boom and cheek blocks on the mast for the lazy jacks. The lazy jacks were also not too hard to install but it took us a few tries to get them evenly spaced.
