Trouble raising the sail all the way on our 2008 SunCat

[Craig Weis]

I was talking to Johnny Walker in Sister Bay, WI who was taking a moment for a BUD and he showed me the mast-tender-system on his dark blue Sun Cat.
1-Johnny uses a sail stop ABOVE the hinge to hold the boom up.
2-He got rid of the 1 inch dia blocks and went to 2 inch for the halyards at the base of the mast. Something suggested by Hutchins.
3-Both the throat and gaff [that may not be the correct names] are hauled together with the 'crutch' on the mast pulled tight first, then the gaff's back end pulled up. I think the gaff has a 2:1 purchase. He says he can pull the gaff near vertical.

The pictures I have seen of cat boats usually show a boom way out past the stern, maybe longer then the 'barn door rudder' that for some reason is not seen on any Com-Pac Yacht Cat boat model. Does anyone feel she'll sail better with a 'barn door'? I'm inclined to think that.

Lucky for him the locker that encloses the mast and mast step [as the mast steps on the keel and tranverses the deck] is pretty tight because 'something went down inside his mast while it was stowed, leaving the 'stub' open and died. So the wife says it's stinky. I suggested a wad of braided brass metal pad, like and S.O.S. pad but not of steel, so no rust, to plug the hole a few inches below the hinge split. To keep the next dead animal out. What keeps the rain water out of the sail rope slot on the back of the mast from channeling rain water down the mast's length and into the bilge? She didn't look sealed up in the slot to me. Around the mast at the deck yes.
skip.

[Potcake boy]

Measure the angle of the gaff?  Well, maybe if I remembered my trig and also knew how to correct for perspectival distortion, I might be able to guesstimate the angle, but I ain't climbing that mast nohow to measure the angle!
Yep, gunter rigs don't have sails hoisted in a track, so if the mast is hoisted with the gaff nearly vertical, it isn't really a gunter rig.  But we call them gunter rigs anyway.
My guess is that the reason why the Suncat gaff is at a shallower angle to the mast than most cats is because it is uncanvased, as is well known, probably by about 15-20%, so the more vertical gaff was a compromise to get back some of the sail area that had been subtracted by the design constraint of having a mast that did not extend beyond the transom.  Anybody have a superior theory?

jdonaldson - not to promote a petite dispute over terminology, but the gaff comes to within what appears to be aprox 15 degrees of vertical - you may wish to measure that for verification.  However of interest is the following from Wikipedia:

Confusion between Gaff Rig and Gunter Rig
Over time the two terms have been used with some interchangeability. While a true gaff rig is with the gaff at an angle to the mast, small boats such as the Heron, the Mirror dinghy and other small sailing dinghies have small, light gaffs which are raised to the vertical position by a single halyard fixed close to the midpoint of the gaff.

This looks like a gunter rig when the boat is fully rigged. However it does not have the sliding component of the wire or the hooped gunter.

Nonetheless such small dinghies have been termed gunter rigged and gaff rigged with free use of each term. It is likely that the fluidity of language allows both terms to be used with correctness for these small boats. For larger craft the terms tend to be more rigorously applied
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Actually the primary benefit to the almost vertical gaff is that the sail has more effective luff area and therefore more efficient.  Sorry - this isn't theory but worthy of illucidation.
Ron

[patch]

  very common problem.point into the wind.pull the gaff halyard 4 hard pulls 1st.then both halyard toghter.watch the nooseneck,get the boom off the gallows.pull hard,yank the sail up the mast.it may help to use the long pin under the boom to get started.after the boom is up past the hinge.raise the gaff as per wind conditions.the higher the boom is up the mast,the more you can slack the gaff,without hitting the gallows.wear gloves,pull as hard as possible.the 1st 4 pulls on the main halyard are the most important.get the boom as high as possible.then sit back,relax,pop a diet coke,put on your mp3 player.if its hot raise your Bimini.then laugh at the sloop sailors jumping around,pulling lines.or the ones waiting for a crew.oh ya,make sure the mainsheet is loose,also the sail down haul is loose.