Jedi has big roached and fully battened main and mizzen sails that we love so much, but there was a problem which was already there when we bought the boat and which got worse and worse over the years: the internal mast tracks were quickly wearing out with the substantial forces that the sliders put on the track. The slides on the batten tensioners (Batslide) were doing okay but the intermediate slides were the ones to jam badly.
So, we decided it was time for new, external tracks for both masts on Jedi. After some research on the Internet and looking at the systems on other boats, we decided to go for the Italian Antal system, using their size 50 cars.
Click the photos to open the complete album on our SmugMug site.
We had to install the system with the masts up so we used track sections of 2 meters long. There are a lot of small parts you need, like couplers, end-fittings, bolts, slugs that go in the internal track to fasten the external track to, gates for getting the cars on and off the track and a special tool to align and hold the lugs for a 2 meter section so you get get it on with the mast vertical. The US distributor was a great help completing the list with all the parts to order.
Next was the problem of connecting the Antal cars to our Batslide tensioners. Batslide is now part of Schaefer and an Email with the question resulted in a quick reply explaining that they had special adapters for the Batslides that could accept the threaded rods from the Antal cars.
After we received all the parts in Panama, I found that our internal tracks were damaged so badly that the slugs for mounting the new tracks would not slide without jamming... just like the old slides. We spent days trying to clean and scrape out the track and that helped, but not enough so we ended up filing a bit off every slug so it would slide freely. There were 200 of those so that was a big job too ;-)
You need three people to mount the tracks and one of them needs to be in the bosun's chair all the time. After a couple of lengths you get the feel for this job and the sections go on quicker and quicker. The lowest section needs to be cut to fit which is easy enough. The gate section goes under that et voila, job done.
The first time we hoisted the sail for trying it out was just amazing. There was no resistance at all, just the weight of the sail. The Antal system does not use ball bearings: the cars have inserts made of a slippery material and this works so well that I can't image one needs ball bearing cars on any boat under 60'.
The stupid thing is that I forgot to take some pictures with the sail up but I promise not to forget the next time and post them here and in our SmugMug album.
We have our bags packed because we are flying back to Holland for the holidays. It just checked the weather there and saw that it's freezing at night so we're in a constant state of meditation, hoping we can still stand that kind of climate!
ciao! from Panama,
Nick & Josie.
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