mystery line

[bellnier]

I have a mystery line. It's a 3/16" line anchored to the mast head that is slightly longer than the mast. It’s too light to be any sort of fixed rigging. My only guess is that it could be used to check for the amount of bend that exists in the mast. My boat is a 1983 O’Day 22 that has fractional mast rigging. I am not sure what that does or how to tune it. From what I have read, it allows the mast to be bent slightly to improve performance. Why else would you need this line?

 

[Joe11688]

I have a mystery line. It's a 3/16" line anchored to the mast head that is slightly longer than the mast. It’s too light to be any sort of fixed rigging. My only guess is that it could be used to check for the amount of bend that exists in the mast. My boat is a 1983 O’Day 22 that has fractional mast rigging. I am not sure what that does or how to tune it. From what I have read, it allows the mast to be bent slightly to improve performance. Why else would you need this line?

That line may have been used for a topping lift of some kind. Do you have a topping lift? Sometimes they used a short pig tail off the back stay with a hook at the end to support the boom when the sail is down. I don't like those, myself. The topping lift on my OD 222 is a long rubber coated cable that is attached to the top of the mast which has a marine eye fitting at the end with a small sheave connected to it. When it's set up, the sheave is about 12" from the end of the boom when it's level. A control line that goes through the boom, one of three lines, goes through the sheave and connects to the back of the boom. The other ends of the control lines go through cam cleats where the goose neck fitting is located at the mast. It's a pretty nice setup for reefing too.
Joe

 

[bellnier]

Thanks Joe. Yes I have a short pig tail off the back stay with a hook at the end to support the boom when the sail is down. I don't what a topping lift is or what it does so I'm not sure if that's what the mystery is. Something would be needed to support the boom if the main is reefed up and down.

 

[Sunbird22358]

That line sure sounds like a topping lift to me. The short length of cable attached to the backstay was factory original to support the boom when the sail is not raised, but many owners recognized the need to support the boom while raising/lowering the sail, or while reefing the sail and so added a line to the masthead like you have. It should run through an eye or block on the end of the boom to a cleat (or maybe it was just tied in a loop through the eye?). We added a topping lift like this to our old CAL 21 after many years of using the short cable off the backstay to support the boom, it was well worth adding! We still used the short pigtail on the backstay when not sailing (It helped to keep the boom centered)
If you look in a good book on sailing techniques you should find references to a topping lift and diagrams of different ways they can be rigged.

The O'DAY 23 and 25/26 had a topping lift like this as standard equipment, maybe O'DAY included it on the last year of the 22 as well.

 

[bellnier]

OK Sunbird, I do have 2 cleats on my boom that I wondereed about. One is the main outhaul and the other could be for a topping line. I want to take some picture to share. This forum is the greatest thing for guys like me to learn from. Thanks for your responses.

 

[olsalt]

I could use it to hold up an awning.

 

[Don-MT]

A shower? An anchor light? A string of flags? Christmas lights? A misbehaving wench? All appropriate uses.

Shine On!
Don

 

[bellnier]

LOL

 

[bellnier]

OK I learned that the mystery line is a topping lift. How does one rig a topping lift? Pictured below is how I rigged it. There was only a single block on the boom. The block being used to secure the main sail seems too small for the task. It looks like it would be good for the topping lift. As you can see, I ran the topping lift thru the mounting hole on the boom. Does anybody have pictures that show how this rigging should look? Note also the main sheet connection was missing a shackle and has an improvised chain quick link.

 

[1977oday22]

I don't have a pic, but my topping lift is pretty close to the one in the pic. Mine has a small block about 6" from the end of the boom and a small cleat to tie it off on about another 8" forward.