# Lowering a hank on jib



## minsc (May 25, 2012)

I have done some searching, and I couldn't find where this topic had been discussed. If it has, then I apologize. I am relatively new to sailing, so please also forgive my ignorance. 

I was wondering how you can lower a jib while single handed, and not have it blow off the side of the boat. I have heard about people using down hauls, and understand how that would allow one to lower the jib without going forward, but I don't see how you would keep the sail on the deck. Or does the down haul keep the sail in place?

Thanks for any replies.


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## MastUndSchotbruch (Nov 26, 2010)

minsc said:


> I have done some searching, and I couldn't find where this topic had been discussed. If it has, then I apologize. I am relatively new to sailing, so please also forgive my ignorance.
> 
> I was wondering how you can lower a jib while single handed, and not have it blow off the side of the boat. I have heard about people using down hauls, and understand how that would allow one to lower the jib without going forward, but I don't see how you would keep the sail on the deck. Or does the down haul keep the sail in place?
> 
> Thanks for any replies.


Just grab it, if necessary sit on it. Stuff it in the sack while it is still hanked on to keep it under control, and THEN remove the hanks. Not rocket science.


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## Alex W (Nov 1, 2012)

Luff up (point into the wind) when dropping the sail and it will more or less pile up on the foredeck. Then go forward for a few seconds to route the halyard around the bow pulpit so that the sail can't fly up on it's own. 

I don't flake and bag the sail until I'm back at the dock.


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## Jeff_H (Feb 26, 2000)

Assuming, per the thread title, that you have a hank-on jib and not one in a foil, a downhaul is very useful in bringing the jib to the deck without having to leave the cockpit. The trick is to tighten the jibsheet and lower the jib while you are pinching upwind, so that the folds of the jib fall on the deck inside the lifelines. Once the jib is on the deck, if you have searoom, you can tighten the mainsheet, and loosely tie off the tiller, and most boats will short tack upwind, while you go forward to secure the jib more permanently.

There are also other things you can do to help keep the jib on board. I rig light line permanently from the toerail to the upper lifeline in a zig-zag. I also have permanently mounted short lengths of shockcord that are attached at the toerail and which have hooks that I clip on the lifelines to stow them under way. (You can see the light line zig-zagging light line in this picture. This was at a point when I did not have shockcord since I was using the furler and was not doing single-handed racing where sail changes might be necessary.








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Once the jib is on the deck, you can walk forward and use the shock cord to clamp the sail to the deck bu reaching across the deck and hooking to something on the other side, or else, clamp the sail to the lifelines against the zig-zagging light lines.

Jeff


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## Faster (Sep 13, 2005)

Also if you head DDW and oversheet the jib in the lee of the mainsail it will often backwind entirely over the deck... very little will go over the lifelines.


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## TQA (Apr 4, 2009)

My staysail is hank on and I sheet it in hard then go forward with a sail tie to hand. 

Free the halyard pull the sail down and tie to top lifeline. ** with a bigger sail use tow ties! }

Loop halyard around a cleat by the inner forestay then pull it tight at the mast to stop it flying up. 

Tidy up at anchorage.


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## SVAuspicious (Oct 31, 2006)

I usually agree with Jeff_H on things. I mildly differ with him on a few points.



Jeff_H said:


> Assuming, per the thread title, that you have a hank-on jib and not one in a foil, a downhaul is very useful in bringing the jib to the deck without having to leave the cockpit.


In my experience there is little difference between dropping a sail from a foil and with hanks on a wire. If you need a downhaul you are covering up for another problem. Either your sail and foil track are dirty or your wire is starting to throw meathooks and your hanks are dirty. The sail should just drop of it's own weight on all but the smallest boats.

The greatest benefit of a downhaul is to hold the head of the sail down once the sail is mostly on deck so the wind doesn't blow it back up the headstay.



Jeff_H said:


> The trick is to tighten the jibsheet and lower the jib while you are pinching upwind, so that the folds of the jib fall on the deck inside the lifelines. Once the jib is on the deck, if you have searoom, you can tighten the mainsheet, and loosely tie off the tiller, and most boats will short tack upwind, while you go forward to secure the jib more permanently.


Mostly agree. With an autopilot I don't pinch that hard and keep the boat on a steady windward course until the sail is tied down.



Jeff_H said:


> There are also other things you can do to help keep the jib on board. I rig light line permanently from the toerail to the upper lifeline in a zig-zag. I also have permanently mounted short lengths of shockcord that are attached at the toerail and which have hooks that I clip on the lifelines to stow them under way. (You can see the light line zig-zagging light line in this picture. This was at a point when I did not have shockcord since I was using the furler and was not doing single-handed racing where sail changes might be necessary.


This is THE best way to get the sail secured quickly. Singlehanded and offshore you are not done yet. You MUST get up there and secure the sail with ties. You can leave it on deck along the lifelines but you've got to tie it down for real. There is just too much stretch in the shockcord, allowing water to build up in the sail and the weight will allow a boarding wave to result in unpleasant results. You will want a goodly number of sail-ties. On my 40 footer with a 100 or a 135 on the furler I use six--the two forward most being pretty long--plus a head holddown. Regardless, keep the jib sheet tight and cleated. No matter what happens you'll have control of the foot, the tack, and the clew. If you have a hank-on you'll have control of the luff. If you don't have a downhaul you should have a line that holds the head down to something convenient like a bow cleat or deck fitting.


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## downeast450 (Jan 16, 2008)

Jeff has it right.

I use a downhaul for my hanked on jibs. It does help and there are times the sail doesn't want to cleanly settle on deck. I have no meat hooks on my head stay. 

I did sew small brass rings onto the sail below hanks to run the downhaul line through. I have a cam cleat on the stbd side of the coaming aft of the jib sheet winch. It runs through a small block at the base of the headstay and back through fair leads along the cabin side. I begin dropping the jib controlling it with the downhaul. As it comes down I tighten in the sheet and it lays on deck inside the lifelines. I do have a web of light line that runs from the toe rail to the lifeline. I also keep a couple of bungees there to temporarily secure the sail on the deck when I have an opportunity to go forward. If need be I will tie it with a light line that is threaded through the toe rail. I am glad I have it. Each jib has its own downhaul line and small block that goes into the sail bag with it.

Down


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## Barquito (Dec 5, 2007)

If I head into a stiff wind, my jib won't fall by itself. I haven't found a way to keep downhauls from binding on my boat, so, I just go forward and pull it down.


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## CapnBilll (Sep 9, 2006)

I pull the jib sheet tight, then while pulling it down wrap the excess in the tail of the anchor line, until I have time to deal with it...usually at dock. If it is so rough I can't leave it there I shove the whole mess down a hatch, then bag it below.


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## downeast450 (Jan 16, 2008)

Barquito said:


> If I head into a stiff wind, my jib won't fall by itself. I haven't found a way to keep downhauls from binding on my boat, so, I just go forward and pull it down.


That was my problem, too. That is what prompted me to try a downhaul. It fixed the problem. It is quite tidy and comfortable now. With the jib halyard in the cockpit. I simply round up, drop (haul down) the jib and head for the mooring under the main.

Down


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## minsc (May 25, 2012)

Thanks for all of the quick replies. All of my experience sailing singlehanded is on a 15 foot dinghy with a roller furling jib, and I am thinking about aquiring a Cal 21. The boat has a hanked on jib and no lifelines to quickly secure the jib to or to catch the jib and keep it from blowing off the side of the boat. I will be day sailing on an inland lake so I shouldn't have to worry too much about rough water or weather, but I guess I am a little worried about leaving the tiller to go secure the sail since I can't really do that in the dinghy and I have no experience doing so. Hopefully if I get the boat I will get more comfortable over time and learn how to have the boat maintain a course without constant input at the helm.


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## Barquito (Dec 5, 2007)

You can also try heaving-to to lower sail. You will have to try to get the boat to balance with the jib luffing, then lower it. However, that will change the balance, and you may find the boat tacks as soon as the jib is down. I have never tried this. Maybe someone who has, can comment. 

If you are out of swimming range of shore, clip onto a jackline.


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## Faster (Sep 13, 2005)

At first the Cal will feel like a freighter compared to your dinghy... but you'll quickly become accustomed to that.

It's not too difficult to simply stall the boat/heave to/lay ahull as you move about preparing things on deck.. just remember to do it out of a traffic zone if you can, and a safe distance from any shore.


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## BlndSqrl (Jan 5, 2012)

On my C&C 36 I have the lifelines on the bow webbed. I lower my hank on sails by heading down wind, letting the main blanket the headsail, trim the sail tight so the clew is near the middle of the boat, then drop it. Having an autopilot makes it easier. Just experiment with lots of methods and develop the one that works for you.


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## Jeff_H (Feb 26, 2000)

I never would have guessed there could be so much discussion on such a simple topic, and yet this is great thread if for no other reason than it illustrates how each of us view this question through the prism of our own sailing experience. What is funny is that with all of the broad diversity of perspectives, none of us actually saw this in a way that best answered the question for a boat like a Cal 21 without lifelines. 

Before I continue to wax poetic on the diversity of answers, I want to make a couple suggestion that addresses the problem for a Cal 21 without lifelines. Your set up is not all that dissimilar to the J-22 that I race on weekly during the summer. J-22's use shockcord that is tied through the toe rail on each side. We are typically dropping the jib because the spinnaker is up or we are coming back to the dock. 

On small boats like these, especially upwind, the jib is too light for gravity provide enough force to cause the sail to come all the way down without someone pulling it down, either on deck (which is what we do on the J-22 with crew) or with a dowhaul (as I used to do on my C&C 22). As Faster suggested, one way to drop the jib is to head down windwind, tighten the jibsheet, and allows the wind to blow the sail down forestay. The risk with doing that on a boat with a genoa is that some of the sail can end up over the rail in the water. 

But once the sail is down, it is pretty easy to hold it to the deck. On the J-22's we have shockchord loops that are fastened through each toerail with plastic hooks on them. When the sail is down, we hook the shockcord over the sail and across the deck to clamp the sail to the deck. Its quick and easy, but the sail will creep up the forestay in heavy winds. 

But with regards to the diversity of viewpoints above, The brass rings for the downhaul is a very traditional way to go and really makes helps the sail come down smoothly. On my 1939 cutter we had a downhaul on the jib flown from the end of the bowsprit. There was one portion of the downhaul that was permanently fed through the rings at on the luff, and it was tied to the halyard when the sail was rigged. The other end of the line, at the tack, had a small loop spliced into it. This end was attached to a line at a block at the end of the bowsprit. That line was permanently run aft to the cockpit. These were very small lines passing through pretty good sized blocks making it possible to pull the knots through the blocks and bring the sail down to the deck. That kept us from having to rerun the downhaul every time we came and went. 

Dave (S/V Auspicious) brings another perspective to this discussion. Dave spends a lot of time offshore on very well set up and maintained serious cruising boats. He understands safety and from that viewpoint, he is 100% right, that if you are leaving a big sail on the deck for any length of time, shockcord won't cut it. In those conditions multiple sail ties are the way to go. 

That said, one step beyond that would be to have sail bags that you can clip top the rail and which have mesh drain panels. When I was working through how I wanted to set up my boat for offshore use, I had designed a jib bag which was a short 'body bag' style sailbag with a zipper along one edge. It had multiple webbed straps that clipped to the rail on one edge and which were stitched into the bag. The straps were long enough and had loops on either side of the zipper with clips that allowed the bag to clipped shut across the zippers. In that way, the bag did not rely on the zipper to hold the sailbag shut. Once zipped and clipped I could fold it over and clip it at a convenient length and haul it to the cockpit by handles which ran up the edges. 

I had also planned sails for offshore use which were intended to be fed into the foil on my furler, but which had webbed straps (passed through in reinforced kringles) that clipped loosely around the headfoil. They did two things, the first is that the kept the sail attached to the foil if the luff tape came out of the foil making retrieval easier, but mostly the strops were there to help me flake the sail when single-handed, in much the same way that you can flake a hanked on sail using the hanks to help make the flakes. 

Where I sort of respectfully slightly disagree with Dave's comments is on sails flown in a headfoil coming down on their own. He is right that heavier-weight cruising sails will come down on their own if the foil is maintained properly. 

My sails which are mostly light weight kevlar/mylar do not come down on their own (except on a run) even with low friction hardware, small diameter halyards, and a well cleaned and lubbed bolt rope track. And perhaps due to the relative widths of our foredecks, my sails will go over the side unless the boat is pointed very close to the wind. 

But again, all of this is mostly a matter of view point, boat size, venue, and sailing style. 

Jeff


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## FSMike (Jan 15, 2010)

You might want to Google "Gerr downhaul".
It takes some fiddling to get it set up but it does work. Kept me from having to go out on my old gaffer's bowsprit when I didn't want to.


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## ShoalFinder (May 18, 2012)

I have a Morgan 22 with one little "lifeline" if you want to call it that, about a foot off the deck. (It's nice to have _something_ to grab onto as I belly slide toward the drink.) I mention this because there is very little to tie my jib to when it is down.

I am always single handing and I had the exact same problem. Just for grins, I wanted to rig a downhaul just as a proof of concept. I ran 1/4" line from the cockpit to the pulpit, through a little carabiner clipped to the forestay attachment point. It passes through the carabiner and is tied to the jib halyard bitter end.

When I hank my sail on, I alternate which side of the hank the downhaul line is on. For example: Imagine the downhaul is tied to the halyard at the head of the jib. the top hank goes on the forestay with the downhaul line hanging to port. Then I push the line between the jib and forestay and connect the second hank. Then I pass the line back to port and clip on the next hank... and so on. The hanks keep the downhaul line secured along the luff edge from the head to the foot where the line passes through the carabiner and runs back to the cockpit. This works nicely because I can change sails and the downhaul never has to be unrigged. It also doesn't flop around when I'm sailing.

My little proof of concept worked so well for me that it never came off. I did get a little "uptown" and put a small block up on the bow to use instead the carabiner, just because all lines get twists and loops in them and they snag. (and because I like to look classy...)

It's ghetto fabulous, but for a single hander it works a treat.

In heavy winds if the jib is flogging it will want to hang. I can take up on the jib halyard to put tension on the jib luff while pulling down on the downhaul and that will sort out whatever is trying to cross over- and the jam goes away. It's a super easy process.

Once the jib is down, I take up on the jib sheet to keep the sail drawn slightly taught. This keeps the majority of the sail out of the water even with a terrible crosswind. When I have time and / or sea room I go forward and bungy the sail to the pulpit (just ball it up if I'm really rushed to get back to the cockpit, i.e. collision avoidance). If I'm motoring back to the marina then I have time to do a nicer job of it. In the worse case scenario where I just can't go forward, having the jib sheet hauled tight keeps all but a little sail out of the water. There certainly isn't enough over the side to be a problem. I can make it back to the marina or an area of less congestion and then go put things in order.


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## PaulinVictoria (Aug 23, 2009)

My setup sounds like what Jeff was describing, but I actually did away with the shockcord and just used the zigzags and the sheet to hold it on the deck, it's never blown over like that. You don't have that luxury obviously. Another little trick is to fasten the downhaul to the second hank down, not the top one. If you pull from the top it can sometimes twist the head of the sail and cause the hank to jam up, I just have a bowline loop and put the hank through that before attaching to the forestay.


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## TQA (Apr 4, 2009)

IMHO downhauls are just one more thing to go wrong. 

Keep It Simple.

You have to go forward to at least tie up the sail if not bag it so just pull it down when you are up there.


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## PaulinVictoria (Aug 23, 2009)

Downhaul is about as simple as it gets, it's a bit of string. Anything you can do to avoid going forward on a small boat when you are single handing is a good thing. You can bag it/tie it when you're at the dock.


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## SVAuspicious (Oct 31, 2006)

Jeff_H said:


> Dave (S/V Auspicious) brings another perspective to this discussion. Dave spends a lot of time offshore on very well set up and maintained serious cruising boats. He understands safety and from that viewpoint, he is 100% right, that if you are leaving a big sail on the deck for any length of time, shockcord won't cut it. In those conditions multiple sail ties are the way to go.


Well that is certainly a nice thing to say.

On the odd occasion when Jeff and I disagree it is usually because we have made different assumptions. I see most things--even on small boats (see SailFar.net)--through the lens of sailing offshore. That leads to the definition of what is "offshore" that we have discussed in many threads before. Without arguing right and wrong, for me Florida to Bimini is not offshore. Norfolk to Bermuda is. Since so many people have definitions that differ I will do my best to define terms when I contribute here.



Jeff_H said:


> Where I sort of respectfully slightly disagree with Dave's comments is on sails flown in a headfoil coming down on their own. He is right that heavier-weight cruising sails will come down on their own if the foil is maintained properly.


I rarely deliver boats less than 36' and most are 45' and up. The sails are heavy and come right down if the foil and sail are clean. Some Sailkote helps even if there is a little dirt.

The smaller the boat the more help you need to get the headsail down. Hank-ons come down more readily than foil sails.

On my boat (mid-weight 40' cruiser) when the jib halyard failed while sailing on a close reach in F5-6 the whole sail came down. We were pounding a bit so I crawled forward. As I recall I could reach the head of the jib sitting in the pulpit.

Part of my spring cleaning is to clean the foil (jib down since I shift from the 100 for the winter to the 135 the rest of the year) on my way down from the masthead.



Jeff_H said:


> My sails which are mostly light weight kevlar/mylar do not come down on their own (except on a run) even with low friction hardware, small diameter halyards, and a well cleaned and lubbed bolt rope track. And perhaps due to the relative widths of our foredecks, my sails will go over the side unless the boat is pointed very close to the wind.


Interesting. My 135 is a light weight laminated sail and it just drops to the deck. The 100 is actually heavier.


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## Barquito (Dec 5, 2007)

> I never would have guessed there could be so much discussion on such a simple topic, and yet this is great thread if for no other reason than it illustrates how each of us view this question through the prism of our own sailing experience. What is funny is that with all of the broad diversity of perspectives, none of us actually saw this in a way that best answered the question for a boat like a Cal 21 without lifelines.


Also, as a sailor who does not tend to get on OPB's, there are just some small details that are not talked about in sailing books, that are not always completely obvious (until you know the answer). I like this thread.


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## jameswilson29 (Aug 15, 2009)

minsc said:


> I have done some searching, and I couldn't find where this topic had been discussed. If it has, then I apologize. I am relatively new to sailing, so please also forgive my ignorance.
> 
> I was wondering how you can lower a jib while single handed, and not have it blow off the side of the boat. I have heard about people using down hauls, and understand how that would allow one to lower the jib without going forward, but I don't see how you would keep the sail on the deck. Or does the down haul keep the sail in place?
> 
> Thanks for any replies.


1. Uncleat halyard from mast. Hold end of line in hand.
2. Move to the bow.
3. Slowly release halyard while gathering in jib as it drops.

You might want to install safety netting on your lifelines. It makes the job much easier.


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## SVAuspicious (Oct 31, 2006)

jameswilson29 said:


> 1. Uncleat halyard from mast. Hold end of line in hand.
> 2. Move to the bow.
> 3. Slowly release halyard while gathering in jib as it drops.
> 
> You might want to install safety netting on your lifelines. It makes the job much easier.


We all fell into this big complicated discussion and Jim wanders by and actually answers the OPs question. *grin*


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