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One String ConversionChris Martin shows how he set up a 'One String' raking system on his Winder Mk1 - 2006 |
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If you own an older Winder Mk 1, or an older boat, you’ve probably been looking with envy at the new “one string” Winder machines. The full blown one string kit is impossible to fit to an existing boat as it requires mouldings that were designed or beefed up to accommodate the system. However, all is not lost. It is possible to achieve almost the same functionality of the one string system, but in a much simpler way. I can’t take the credit for designing this system, I copied it off an existing boat (3639). It costs about £25, and takes 3 hours, to convert your boat! What’s involved The thing that we want to do is get the jib halyard, lowers and main shrouds to work off of two ropes - this means that two need to be linked together. Linking the lowers to the shrouds is no good as we need to maintain independent adjustment of the rig tension. Since as we increase our rake we need to tighten the lowers the logical strings to link are the jib and lowers. Equipment The essential items are drill & bits, screwdrivers, sikkaflex (Not bathroom sealent!) two identical pulley blocks with deck clips (the same size as the ones for the lowers at the base of the king posts), about 6 metres of 3 or 4mm non-stretch rope, two smallish single hole deck clips a long 4mm bolt with nut and four one inch self tappers. A vice is helpful, but not essential. What to do Please note this all assumes you have the standard Winder fit out. This will make more sense if you are looking at the boat while reading! 1) Strip out the rope that forms the last part of the lowers purchase cascade down each side of the boat – leave the wires alone. You’ll have to cut it off the tensioner between the kingposts. 2) Strip off the Cunningham control line and the jib halyard – be sure to put whipping twine though the central moulding for the jib as it’s a pain to re-thread without! 3) This is the most difficult part! The two holes where the cunningham and jib controls pass through the foredeck need to be merged together to form a slot. Use a drill and a steady hand to work the holes together. The problem is the tufnol plate underneath, cutting the foam and glass is easy. Minor slips can be filed out – a bigger slot helps. 4) Take the triple pulley with hook that you attach to the jib hayard. If you look at the side you will see two rivets. The top one needs to be drilled out. Place the block in a vice if you have one and proceed – this is easy and it will not all fall apart. You then need to attach one single hole deck clip to each side. This is where the bolt comes in. You may need to drill the holes in the block out very slightly. 
The jib block after modification with the two strings (Purple/Yellow) for the lowers attached. 5) Remove the two blocks for the Cunningham from the bottom of the boat (Base of the posts) and replace them with the beefier blocks you bought. Don’t forget to put sikkaflex in the holes before you attach. 6) Restring the jib tensioner as it was before. 7) Using the piece of 3 or 4mm rope you bought, restring the lowers cascade. This time instead of tieing the free end to the clips on the front tank, you need to run the rope up through the new pulley where the cunningham was, up through the slot in the foredeck and tie onto the clips you bolted onto the triple block. 8) Reattach the Cunningham pulleys aft of where they were. Again, don’t forget to sikkaflex the holes. 9) Re string the through the repositioned blocks. 
The cockpit floor after modification. The “One string” part consists of the yellow/purple fleck string which is attached to the lowers. The forward block was already there and is still for the lowers, the centre block with the pink rope is the shroud tensioner and the rear large block was originally the Cunningham. It now runs the lowers up and onto the jib tensioner so that the lowers tighten as you rake. The Cunningham is now the smaller block with the solid purple rope. 10) We now need to make sure that the lowers are being tensioned equally. The best way to do this is to rig the boat with the jib, tension it as we would for sailing but pull on loads of lowers. Measure from the base of the tensioning blocks up to the lowest pulley of the cascade and adjust the ends on the jib tensioner until they are the same. The effects The 8:1 purchase that the jib has over the lowers when the mast is raked is not quite enough. As you rake you’ll find that the lowers slightly overtension, but this is in a way good because as you pull the mast upright downwind the ease removing the possibility of you inverting the mast! However if you go from upright to serious rake you will find you still need to ease the lowers a touch to keep the same tension. My marks now consist of one piece of tape on the front post: Top of the tape is the raked setting, bottom of the tape is upright. This is not quite the same as the true one string which does the kicker as well, but is a huge improvement over the original sy stems. It is now feasible to pull the rig forward on small waters. The set of instructions above are biased towards a Winder boat, but there is no reason why it won’t work on any boat with a similar fit out. Likely candidates are Turners, Rowsells and Smarts. See also: One string system first announced Photos of the system on MR3683 |