Lazy Jacks
I made the Lazy Jack System myself, instead of buying one. I used a fairly simple design involving a series of loops. The system seems to work pretty well, and provides a greater amount of support than many commercially available systems.
System Design
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| The system is made of a continous loop attached to the mast and three webbing loops attached to the boom, as shown above. | It is designed to retract while the sail is raised, so not to interfere with sailing performance. |
System Photos
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| The system provides five strands of webbing to contain the sail. There are clips (shown right) to release the raising loop from the webbing loops. This comes in handy when taking the rig down. |
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| The raising/lowering loop is controlled by a halyard loop that runs back to the cockpit. You release the raising halyard and then quickly raise the mainsail. A toplift line (not shown) keeps the boom up, so the sail can be raised off the wind. I find it a quicker process than raising the sail while headed into the wind. Lowering the sail is still best if done heading into the wind as some assistance is usually needed to guide the mainsail into the webbing. |