DaySailer.org Forum

New sailor with new, to me, Daysailer.
I know that you must tie a figure 8 knot at the end of the main sheet. My question is, do you tie the knot so that the boom stops just shy of the shrouds??
Thanks

Yes.

That's the most convenient place.

Also, there's no need for much tail beyond that knot, so you can trim your sheet if necessary. Sometimes it's OK to leave a bit of a handlhold length after the stopper knot so you can be sure to be able to pull it away from the cleat again, but when the main is all the way out, the sheet usually isn't loaded heavily (unless you are sailing downwind at rather high winds). Even then, it's easy enough to take tension off the sheet by grabbing it on the other side of the swivel block.

Pardon my ignorance but where do you tie the not to get the stop limit you want

If you swing the boom out to where it almost touches the shrouds. That's where I would place the stopper knot. That way, if you just let go of the sheet, the boom can't swing all the way into the shroud. And it never needs to be longer.

If, after you've found that location you find your mainsheet has a long tail, you should feel free to cut all but about 4-6" of it to reduce the tangle. Being a few, very few inches overlength would allow you to trim a bit of sheet from the other end (where presumably it ties into a becket and that knot may wear out. But a long, useless tail is just an accident waiting to happen.

Did I get your question?

GL

sorry just saw your post with answer, and yes you , and have answered the questions, but so many more are there????????? you wouldn't happen to have a photo of how it ties to the becket?

You can look up knots by name on the interweb. Much better than any photo I could supply.

I tend to use a "buntline hitch" when tying the mainsheet to the becket, but you could also use a "halyard hitch". Both are very compact knots that are perfect for this application. I find bowlines unnecessarily bulky, and in some applications the fact that you "lose" the last 2-3" due to the size of the loop can make a difference.

A great Christmas gift is either Ashley's "Ashley's Book of Knots" or, more modern and less full of amusing and irrelevant detail, any of Gregory Budworth's books. He's done several and many cover a number of knots useful to sailing, although you never know when you might use something different.

My boat has 3 or 4 different knots that aren't the standard figure eight or bowline, something that drives (some of) my crew to distraction. The better sailors have learned all of these by now, and some have retaliated by doing fancy stopper knots (not simple figure . All in good fun.

Cut a piece off two differently colored ropes and superglue them together, so you have one with two differently colored ends. That makes a great tool for practicing knots as you can better follow the turns than using a single rope of uniform color.

Here are the knots I'm using:

1. Bowline -- to attach painter to bow eye
2. Figure Eight -- as stopper knot
3. Buntline Hitch -- to tie main to becket and spinnaker halyard to spinnaker
4. Sheet bend -- modified version, for tying the two ends of the traveler
5. Clove hitch -- to tie a fender to the shrouds
6. Luggage tag hitch (with toggle) -- to tie main halyard to headboard
7. Anchor hitch -- once in a blue moon when I anchor
8. Rolling hitch (tautline hitch) -- I use it to attach a bungee to to the tail of the outhaul to keep it flat next to the boom
9. Butterfly hitch -- to make a loop in the middle of a line to tie something to - occasional use
10. Round turn and two half hitches -- occasional uses, tying to a ring
11. Trucker's hitch -- to secure a load