What Is This?

JayhawkFlyer

New Member
Just bought two Lasers. Came with three standard sails and a radial sail. Also received both the standard lower mast x 2 and a radial lower mast.

However, the radial sail (Laser brand) doesn't have the Velcro top loop like the standard sails. It has this stainless "basket bracket" that seems to skip over the top of the upper mast sections with some sort of hoisting line that runs down the inside of the sail sleeve. It also appears as if I should tie the head of the sail to this basket bracket. Can anyone shed some light onto how this should be rigged?

Thanks!
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Undo the line from the burgee bracket at the front, feed through the fairlead at the back and tie end to the loop at top of sail.
Not sure if haliard should run inside sleeve of sail, would think it might get restricted that way.
Hoist sail using haliard and tie end off possibly around gooseneck or bang tang.
If you bend top part of burger bracket forward to 90 degrees you can mount a conventional burgee shaft through the top and bottom hole and the dimple in the middle provides enough friction to prevent burgee falling out.
I believe this was called M Rig but could be wrong. Also thought it was a way of rigging smaller sail on standard mast sections without need for Radial bottom section
 
That is the original Radial halyard system that was carried over from the earlier M rig. It was changed to the strap (which btw has no Velcro) at some time in the late 1980s or early '90s. Ceebee2 already explained how it works, but I might add that it's pretty useless - you have to thread the mast just the way you do without it, both rigging and unrigging. It only gives you the opportunity to lower the sail temporarily, and even that isn't good for the sail as it gets bunched against the gooseneck. For racing, you should use the full-length halyard, but otherwise you might want to switch it to a short piece of rope between the head and the halyard fairlead.

_
 
This is cool. Had never seen the M-rig set up back in the day. I always wondered how you could lower the sail much at all with the sleeve getting all bunched up. Can it get lower than half way down?
 
Thanks, CB. Awesome description of what I have going on. Will likely delete halyard as LaLi recommends and simply tie fixed.

Cheers.
JFlyer
 
I was going to say it was an M-rig. Didn't know early Radials used the same halyard bracket contraption.

My advice for an M-rig would be to just throw it away.

Old thread on the M-rig: Laser M rig
 

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