Main Sheet Question

Mike Honcho

Mike Honcho

Member
So I grew up sailing with my g-pa on a lake with a converted dingy with a sail make from fabric sugar bags. About 10 years ago I found a laser that my dad bought to keep at the lake property. This year I was fortunate enough to purchase property on the same lake and my dad gave me the laser. I've picked up my sailing and started to actually sail it for speed not, to hike it and flip it. I've fixed the incorrect rigging and now actually get some decent speed out of it.

Now for my question...... How the heck do you keep the main sheet from getting all tangled up in your feet, the hiking strap and on itself? The length of mine allows for the boom to extend 90 degrees for a run only so I don't have an excessive amount of rope. I was out today in gusts and the most challenging thing (ok maybe not the most) was keeping the sheet free to pay out as needed. Thanks guys, I've learned about from this sight...
 
People talk about coiling the mainsheet "climbing rope style" before rigging it to ensure it has no twists built in (as does the Rooster website) but a search on you-tube seems to show most climbers doubling the rope up over their shoulders to create a back-pack, probably because they have getting on for 100m of the stuff. This clip shows an electrician coiling a co-ax cable using the over & under technique.
Apologies if I'm teaching you to suck eggs (and I really hope that expression works outside the UK).
 
Some types of line tangle really easy, especially if they're thick and absorb water, I've seen people using as large as 8 or 9mm! It makes your life much easier to have a good mainsheet.

I use 6mm Rooster Polilite, works really well (http://laserxd.com/product/rooster-polilite-6mm/),

if you're using the oem main block you might prefer a 7mm Rooster Polilite or FSE Robline mainsheet.
 
I guess it's a scientific (topological?) fact that all rope tangles, and something that sailors just have to live with. In the Laser, the mess is usually created at the leeward mark when you suddenly have ten extra metres of loose sheet crossing your legs & hiking strap. It's best to sort it out right away, as it gets only worse with each tack! Try hiking a second or two with one leg only, both at a time, so the sheet drops to the floor and you can pull the slack out.

If you're not tying the free end of the sheet to the aft end of the hiking strap, start doing it - any spontaneous knots will be slipknots and therefore much easier to untie. Just thread the rope through the loop in the strap and tie a figure-8 (or a double figure-8 if you want to be sure) knot at the end. This makes it reasonably easy to untwist the rope, even on the water, so it's less likely to kink.

As types of rope go, anything not too soft or not too thick (yes, 8 mm is too much) is ok. I've used 7 mm Rooster and 6 mm Marlow Excel Racing before; I ordered a lot of Gottifredi Maffioli 6.5 mm Superswift for my Lightning spinnaker sheet, and found it works fine on the Laser, too.
 
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