Rig Admirable
by Mike Thompson, 9/25/2018
Admirable is the fishing sailboat that is the industrial-strength, working class hero of the fleet at the Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle. There's a great video on YouTube named The Sailboat Days that shows boats like Admirable in action during the 1940's and early 1950's, when only sailboats were allowed to fish for salmon commercially in Alaska's Bristol Bay. I'm fortunate to be one of Admirable's skippers at CWB!
There's been a problem lately with Admirable's rig, namely that the boom hangs so low that it becomes a hazard to the crew when the winds are strong and the boom is swinging across the boat with a lot of force. This page documents a solution to the problem.
Below are three pictures of what the solution looks like. By drawing the clew very close to the top of the boom, it causes the sail to draw the boom higher, well above the head of the crew member that's at the tiller. The first picture is of 5'11" yours truly at the tiller, with the boom over a foot above my head. The next two pictures show fore- and aft-looking views of the details of the lines that hold the clew to the aft end of the boom.
Shown below is the "sleeve" that creates the leverage that draws the clew downward toward the boom. This sleeve is fashioned from four round turns of line around the boom, positioned just forward of the aft-most of the four wooden thumbs that are part of the boom. The ends of the turns of line are fastened together with a doubled sheet bend. This sleeve is left permanently in place on the boom.
Shown below is the line that connects the grommet at the clew to the knob that's at the aft end of the boom, allowing the boom snotter to provide the tension that draws the boom and clew aft and stretches the foot of the sail. There are two loops in this line, both bowlines. The forward bowline is looped through the clew grommet to form a ring hitch. The aft loop, after being threaded under the lines that form the sleeve, is hooked around the knob at the aft end of the boom.
Shown below is the line being threaded under the four round turns that form the sleeve. Because the sleeve is pretty tight against the boom, you'll need to thread the line through one step at a time, in order to get it under each of the four round turns that form the sleeve.
One advantage of this setup is that it leaves the forward end of the boom positioned so that there is ample clearance between the forward end of the sprit and the blocks that tension the boom snotter. The forward end of the sprit and the blocks that tension the boom snotter can end up interfering with one another if the boom is too far forward.
Below is Admirable under sail using this rig at CWB Sunday Public Sail on 9/23/2018, with the boom well overhead, under the direction of Skipper Pete.
