Articulation Nation

The original Melges 30 came stock with an articulaing sprit, and so did mine.  Despite being told to ditch it by countless excellent sailors, including the great Jonathan McKee, who successfully cancelled a similar setup on his Bieker 44, I kept it.  In my mind, the ability to pull the pole back is one of the irrestiable quirks of the original build.  Needless to say, one can make a very strong argument that modern A2s work amazingly well, despite being tacked on center, even at very deep angles.  Really, the only boats that seem to embrace an articulating sprit, and all its hassles, are modern Mini Transat boats.  

So be it.

The system consists of the pole itself, and what I might call an articulating sleeve.  I bought a new pole to match the JC dimensions of the Melges 32 from ICE, and a slightly larger tube for the sleeve.  Step one, I beefed up one end of the sleeve with a wrap of uni, and balanced weave carbon.

Next up, I CNC cut an handful of G10 parts to create some ears to attach tackle needed to extend and jibe the sprit itself.  The smart move here was building the ears as layers of thinner G10, which enabled me to radius both sides of the rope eye hole directly with the robot.

All glued and wrapped, I feel good about the overall strength.  Here is a good look at the UHMW bearing surface for the aft end of the sleeve.  Remind me to use some Locktite on the nut that holds our sleeve to the original under-deck harken track.

The ears have oval cutouts to serve extension lines, AND the articulation lines.  I do have a tiny bit of concern that these might become fouled with one another.  If that is the case, I will add a pin from top to bottom to keep them separate, even when slack.

Next up are some blocks on the walls of the forepeak.  The easy solution would be using simple blocks that floated, but I wanted to avoid them flopping around when sailing upwind in waves.  I made the call to employ fixed blocks.  The trick to this solution was machining a mounting plate at a very specific compound angle.

Here is the end result with blocks in position.

Further back, I employ a 4:1, before diving into a carbon tube that guides the jibing lines, through the cabinets and eventually to cam cleats in the cockpit.