Launched "Steppin' Up" -Stepping a Mast with a CDI

[Gil Weiss]

Well, the boating season began for us yesterday with a non eventful launch of "Steppin' Up" at Lake Nockamixon here is SE PA. Today I put the trailer away for the summer and tomorrow we go sailing!

Stepping the mast with a roller furler is a bit trickier than without one as the furler cannot be bent very much and the added weight makes things a tad trickier. I tied a line to the bottom (onto a small shackle that connects the boat to the forestay) and had my wife stand in the bed of our pick up truck holding the line and furler while I started moving the mast upward in the boat. Her height in the truck and the fact she was directly in line with the boat made it easy for me to push and her to pull up the mast. She then carefully repositioned the furler inside the bow rail and I attached the shackle to the bow.

After adjusting the rig last year, I loosened the port stay when I pulled the boat last fall and tightened the rig with it yesterday so I did not need to mess with the turnbuckle inside the furler.

Incidentally, while having read that one doesn't need a jib roller furler on a CP16, my experience says that it is a wonderful upgrade!

One other "tweak" I did to my boat this year is have my sailmaker lower the headboard on the main by 3". This was easy to do and now gets my boom up a few inches so the downhaul is operational. In its original configuration the Johnson mainsail left the boom in its lowest position. This also puts the boom a few inches higher over our heads.

This is our fourth summer sailing our CP16 and I pretty much have things where I want them.