Home Forums Reply To: Complete Beginners guide to the GP14 rigging

#14566
getmwaqar
Keymaster

Hi Oliver,

I took the GP14 out solo this Sunday and had a fantastic time.  It was great to have her on the water and no capsize!  I was very fortunate that I met a chap called Tim who seemed to know nearly everything about the GP14.  He pointed out the rigging and points of improvement, things to watch out for and knacks for getting tensions on the foresail.

Your guides make much more sense to me now that I have had the various parts of the rigging pointed out to me and that I have finally successfully rigged her.  Nothing quite like actually doing it!

Your last post is very informative and concurs with the advice and training I received over the weekend.  My boat also has rope halyard for both main and foresail as discussed in you post.  The method of pulling on the fore-stay works very well.  It also has a toothed rack for putting extra tension on the foresail halyard although we noticed that the previous owner had rigged the main and foresail halyards to come out on the incorrect side of the mast. I just re-routed them at the bottom just above the spinnaker down-haul.

Another tip I received was not to hook the jib onto the fore-stay (if you happen to have sails this old) . This also allows for more tension to be applied.

The boat also has either towing or mooring cleats on the bow deck each side.  These rely have to go as the jib sheet gets caught in them nearly every time, just as my new friend Tim said they would. Which sailing solo made for a few exiting moments :0)

Still not sure about how much tension to place on the shrouds.  I did pull the mast back out of the gate a touch so that I could get them connected a notch further down on the track before pushing the mast forward and closing the gate and tightening up the for stay.

I also noticed the block of wood the bottom of the mast fits into.  It looks like it will need replacing.  I was also advised to place chocks of wood in it to stop the mast moving in its seat.

Looks like I’m getting there at last.

Thanks to Chris for prompting Oliver’s last post.

Dave