The New Beneteau First 34.7
Photo: Sam Bourne
Making the systems on your boat more efficient will make a large difference to your boathandling
and will make you faster around the race course. This series of articles is aimed at
illustrating some areas for attention on a standard production cruiser/racer, using the example
of a new Beneteau 34.7.
Part 3: Headsail Car Control and Inhauler
The New Beneteau First 34.7 is an IRC-focused Cruiser-Racer from the drawing board of Farr Yacht
Design. This new offering is a departure from the normal Beneteau formula in that she is
aggressively positioned in IRC and features a deep T-shaped bulb keel with a high ballast ratio.
The standard boat is entirely Harken-equipped but there are some tweaks you can do to make boat
handling easier and get an edge on the competition.
Headsail Car System
The standard boat has ball bearing adjustable genoa cars and pin-stop jib cars further forward
on a separate set of tracks.
In discussion with the sailmaker, it was decided that having fully adjustable jib cars would
be very important to allow you to change gears easily when sailing with the non-overlapping #3
headsail. We added a second pair of the #1537 Mid Range Genoa Cars over the pin-stop cars.
Harken UK designed a system to achieve the simultaneous adjustment of both cars, using the
existing puller system and adding some extra parts. The biggest problem faced in order to
achieve this is to get sufficient power to adjust the highly loaded #3 car, while retaining
sufficient travel to have the wide range of adjustment required for the large overlapping
headsails. We managed to achieve this by setting up the jib car on an 8:1 purchase and the
genoa car on a 4:1.
Now, here comes the science bit! The main purchase is a 4:1, using a #2655 and a 2656 40C
Fiddle, leading to a #150 Cammatic. For the Genoa car puller we lead a strop from the floating
block around the existing single block mounted just aft of the shrouds and then back to the car.
The jib car puller runs from the purchase floating block forward to a special single end control,
#HC7075, and then there is a 2:1 purchase fitted to the front of the car, giving an 8:1 control.
Thus, the relative travel of the jib car is exactly half that of the genoa car, due to the 8:1
purchase on the jib and 4:1 on the genoa. This allows the full range of movement of both cars on
their tracks.
Jib Sheet Inhauler
Due to the design of the coachroof being relatively wide, an jib inhauler is required to reduce
the sheeting angle for the non-overlapping #3 jib towards a more ideal 7 to 8 degrees to allow
better pointing.
A 2:1 initial purchase leads through a ring for the sheet and
then to a block at the mastbase.
Photo: Sam Bourne |
The final 4:1 purchase lead aft to the cockpit. Note the calibration strips.
Photo: Sam Bourne |
A 2:1 purchase through a floating stainless steel ring for the sheet is the simplest way to
start an inhauler. In this case, the dead end is on the mast collar, with a snapshackle and
an extra 200mm strop spliced in so you can fully release the inhauler for wide-lead blast
reaching with the #3. The control line runs back through a #2600 57C block attached to the
mast collar before running back through a #350 29C Cheek block to deflect the lead around the
hatch garage, before leading back to a 4:1 purchase made up from a #2655 40C Fiddle block and
a #2637 40C Single and Becket, leading to a #150 Cam-matic cleat and #375 Extreme Angle
Fairlead. This gives a total purchase of 8:1, which is sufficient to easily adjust this
control when under load. Note the calibration strips - this allows you to reproduce fast
settings easily.
Links:
Part 1: Mainsheet and Traveller
Part 2: Backstay and Vang
Part 4: Spinnaker Systems and Cockpit Layout
