RIGGING AN FD

My own advice is to put the boat together completely in your garden or the dinghy park, without thinking that you will be sailing afterwards. Avoid the frustration of finding you have forgotton something! Another good idea is to ask a responsible adult to come and help, or check the boat over when you have finished, there are many ways of putting an FD together, and, as Andrew says, it will only fit together properly one way. To have a more experienced sailor available to help solve problems will only cost a beer or two, and is very useful. Mine’s a Grolsch, and Andrew will have a V.B. Thanks!

It’s like a jigsaw - it will all fit together only one way properly, and it should all look right (sort of) once it’s there.

We normally rig our boat this way (and in approximate chronological order):

put the mast up the lower (side) stays and preventer (babystay) will hold the mast up while you do the rest of it.

the lowers should exit the deck near the sidestays, and connect onto the mast near the gooseneck.

the preventer is attached to the foredeck, and attaches to the mast between the gooseneck and the deck.

Then fit the forestay. This is probably 2 mm wire attached to the mast, above the jib halyard exit block.

this is connected to the forestay which exits the deck just forward of the genoa furler.

The sidestays will attach to the adjustable mechanism under the deck.

(the solid looking arrangement near the lowers fitting.)

the trapeze (probably continuous system?) is attached to both sides of the mast just above the sidestays, and at the other end is restrained by shockcord going into the deck near the sidestay fittings.

At this stage, we usually undo each of the lowers, sidestays, and trapeze, and re-do them *inside* the jib & spinnaker sheets.

If you are going to hoist the genoa unrolled, make sure that the furler has been rotated by hand so that most of the furling rope is wound on the drum.

The genoa halyard is an adjustable system. after the sail has been hoisted by hand, the wire loop on the tail of the halyard is shackled to a pulley system, so that the helmsman can adjust the tension from either side of the boat while racing.

You should be able which pulleys to use by: a) the control lines will come back to (labelled?!) cleats handy to the helmsman, or b) the halyard will have coarse and fine adjustments.

Find the one to use, hoist the sail, the connect the halyard to the pulleys.

Give it a little bit of tension, to stop everything flopping around.

The jib sheets (might be continuous system) are hopefully already fitted. If not, they enter the deck through the big blocks, turn forward , then exit through cleats under the sidedeck.

The spinnaker halyard is a continuous system with the retrieval line.

The halyard at the top exits the mast approx. 500 mm above the genoa & forestay fittings. at the bottom of the mast it gets a bit application dependant. I’ll describe how it’s routed on our boat:

It leaves the mast and is turned aft. we try to thread it so that it won’t wrap around any of the other control lines while the boat is sailing. It goes aft to a cam cleat under the main traveller, then through a block approx. 100 mm behind the cleat. (So that the helmsman, to hoist pulls on the rope after the block, then to release, lifts the line between the cleat and the pulley.)

After the pulley, it goes to a pulley mounted inside the transom of the boat, then back forward, through an entry block into the side deck aft of the main traveller, then through the extension of the spinnaker chute.

(at this stage you don’t have the spinnaker rigged, but you have (i hope) a tracer line running through the launching chute - so tie that retrieval/halyard to that.)

If the spinnaker sheets are not already fitted, rig it now. we use a continous sheet. from the bow, it goes outside the stbd stays to blocks in the stbd deck near the transom, then under the side deck to exit blocks just aft of the genoa sheets, then back into the side deck on the port side, under the deck aft to the port deck exit block near the transom, then back up to the bow.

To rig the spinnaker, find the sewn loop near the centre of it. We have this on the outside (front) of the sail. (so the retrieval line helps keep it out of the water as it’s being lowered.) attach the halyard and sheets (I know from personal experience how embarrassing it is to hoist the spinnaker sideways, so it’s worth double checking that the halyard is tied to the head and not one of the clews!) Then get an assistant to pull the tracer line back through the spinnaker chute while you feed the kite in, ensuring at the end that the head and two clews are near the mouth of the tube. pull the tracer line back, and tie the end of the halyard to the loop on the sail.

The mainsail’s pretty simple. Fit the battens, feed the main onto the sail track on the boom.

There may be two adjustable controls at the clew of the main:

the outhaul, and the "old-man" rope. The outhaul pulls the clew out towards the end of the boom, the other control connects to a cringle approx. 100 mm above the clew.

Pulling this one increases the clearance between the boom and the helmsman’s hat when the mast is raked severely. might also have some aerodynamic effect.

hoist the main. it may help if you have a helper lift the boom to help the last bit. The main halyard should lock off on a clip or something near where it exits the bottom of the mast.

rig the main sheet. ours is tied to the traveller car, goes to the forward block on the boom, back to the traveller, to the aft boom block, then to a ratchet block on the floor of the boat.

rig the cunningham. This is another control routed back for adjustment by the helmsman.

The boom vang likely has a quick release fitting to attach to the boom. make sure it’s clear, but leave it unattached until you’re on the water and have the centreboard down, so that the vang does not catch on the raised board.

spinnaker pole uses self launching system. Pole should already be on side of boom. launch rope goes from aft end of pole, to fitting on front of mast (approx. 600 mm above gooseneck), then down to (probably) cam cleat. on mast, or on deck near mast.

spinnaker pole topping lift from front of pole, OUTSIDE launch rope, to pulley on mast, above spreaders, then (on ours) back down to cleat on mast.

The concept is that pulling on the launcher rope will automatically set the pole, and the topping lift should be approximately preset to the right setting. releasing the launch rope allows the shock cord to pull the pole back along the boom. It’s worth testing it, just to make sure that all the ropes are not crossed.

If you have a swing-up rudder, fit that. (otherwise you’ll have to wait until you’re waist deep in water to fit a fixed one.)

make sure the bungs and inspection port covers are in place, and go for a sail.

There are some tips on tuning the FD & setting up the mast rake,