They’re high quality, inexpensive, and work great. I like these 40mm web attachment style blocks from Nautos. I won’t be flying the spinnaker at the same time so they won’t be in use anyway. When I want to set up the jib for self-tacking, I just move my existing spinnaker sheet blocks forward from the aft coamings to midship. The clew will have a little more friction but not enough to keep it from working. If you only have one block or carabiner, reave the sheet directly through the clew grommet in step 2 below instead and attach your block or carabiner to the side deck where it can lead the sheet. They can be snatch blocks that you keep on hand for miscellaneous jobs, your spinnaker sheet blocks if they’re portable, or they can be permanent blocks that you install just for this purpose (in that case, your system won’t be free). The only other parts you need are two turning blocks. It reuses one of the headsail sheets you already have to form a bridle on the foredeck for the block to ride on. Instead of a track fixed to the deck, this system uses a block temporarily fixed to the jib clew. The picture below shows the system with a thick red line that I will describe and it cost me nothing new to set up. Such systems can cost many hundreds of dollars to retrofit to a conventional yacht.
The sheet leads to the cockpit where the skipper can adjust the jib shape by trimming the sheet. The jib clew is attached to the track by a single sheet to a car that glides freely on the track like a traveler. Commercial self-tacking systems accomplish this with an arc-shaped track mounted to the foredeck. The basic principle of a self-tacking jib is simple a means for the clew of the jib to remain sheeted throughout its arc of travel from one side of the sailboat to the other during tacks. Or your crew are seriously chilling (lazy) and you’d rather not have to mind the headsail.Have a broken jib car or winch that makes normal tacking impossible or dangerous.Are short tacking through a narrow passageway.Are single-handed or short-handed on crew.Will your hover chair fit in your cockpit?īut there are practical benefits to a self-tacking jib if you: How lazy will we get? A scene from the futuristic, animated movie Wall-E. Seems it won’t be long before sailboats are fly-by-wire like airplanes and driverless cars.
Self-tacking headsails are becoming more and more popular on high-end cruising yachts as designers strive to remove as much effort from sailing as possible with headsail furlers, in-mast mainsail furling, electric winches, autopilots, and more. For a complete explanation of why I’m telling you this and how you can support this blog without paying more, please read my full disclosure. Those commissions help to pay the costs associated with running this site so that it stays free for everyone to enjoy. That means I receive a small commission if you make a purchase using those links. I set one up for free and you can too.īefore I continue, a bit of legal housekeeping. You just push the helm to lee, come about as you normally would, and the jib passes through the fore triangle by itself and stops on the new lee side at the same sheeting angle as it was before the tack.
In fact, after you set it up, you don’t have to touch the sheet again while sailing. You don’t have to cast off the working sheet and haul in the lazy sheet on every tack. But that’s exactly what one is, a headsail that sheets itself when you tack. They’re usually only found on luxury sailboats. You may not have seen or even heard of a self-tacking jib before.