Building Lazy Jacks

[Mason Smith]

Just when I found myself a 1989 Nimble 24 in Ottawa and brought it here to the central Adirondacks, figuring to use it for weeks at a time on Lakes George, Champlain, and Ontario, and the St. Lawrence River and Thousand Islands (but first the first week of November 2015 on the northern Chesapeake) my wife gave me Maynard Bray's book Aida, which turns out to be a great primer on yawl sailing. It introduced me to the idea of a topping lift and lazyjacks on a yawl's mizzen.

So I have come here to this forum for information and ideas: what line, how rigged, how many legs, what fittings? When I first raised the mainmast, I found hanging just in arm's reach, from well up the mast, light lines with tiny blocks at their ends, and found eyes and cleat on the boom for legs. Behold, my first-ever jacks. (The Nimble 24 is by far my largest boat to date.) A former owner had changed the sprit-boomed mizzen to a boomed one.) One cannot walk aft beside the mizzen on this boat; the mizzen s stepped way aft and is sheeted to a I don't know what to call I,,t: a triangular object, the convergence of two boomkins, which are underneath a big solar panel mounted low above them on the mizzen mast. This is what makes the lazyjacks so desirable.

Sure enough I have found some good information. But if so moved, experts, please pose some more. And greetings to Brian Toss. If you see this, Brian, hello. We met at WB school in about 1978 to 1980 when I was researching an article on Arno Day by taking his class--to which you gave a demonstration.