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.................................................--- Slugs ---
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Slugs......... a year ago I wouldn't of had a clue what that word meant, but after buying our Mac I soon heard it come up on the Internet forums. I kind of stored the word away in the back of my mind, but didn't give it much thought until our first sailing experience on McPhee Reservoir in Colorado around the 1st of May 2009.
There raising and lowering the main for the first times and having the bolt rope in the sail stick in the track in the mast I started to remember a fix for this situation..........slugs.
So now I looked into these things called slugs and we bought 14 slugs and 14 shackles to go with them with the intention of installing them before our long trip to Priest Lake in Idaho and Kootenay Lake in Canada, but ran out of time and just took them along. A couple times we thought about trying to install them, but felt it was best to do this at home and let it go.
Upon returning home and before our 1st three day trip to Lake Powell I finally got around to attaching them to the main and used them then and again on our long 'sail the length of Lake Powell' 18 day trip later in September/October of 2009. All that I can say is that they are like night and day when it comes to raising the main or lowering it. Especially in windy conditions when you are also trying to reef. I strongly recommend them. What follows is how I installed them with no instructions, just instinct, so follow my lead if you want or look for other's examples of how they installed them, but whatever you do enter the world of "slugs", you won't be sorry,
Sum
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The arrows point to the slugs attached to the bolt rope and in the mast track at the lower part of the Main. They continue all the way to the top and we used a total of 14. Once the slug is installed the bolt rope never goes in the mast track, just the slugs and they slide very easily, which makes it very easy to raise or lower the main in any kind of conditions.
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We use a slug stop like the one above in the picture that goes in the track in the mast and prevents the slugs from falling out of the track in the mast when you lower the sail. The one in the picture is from West Marine.
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I wanted 2 slugs closer together at the head of the sail to help guide the sail up and down better there. Below the second one to the top I divided the leading edge of the sail, the luff, off into equal distances for the other 12 slugs I had. I didn't want any of the slugs right at the reef point cringles (grommets at the larger arrow in the middle) since they go on a hook at the gooseneck when the sail is reefed and I didn't want a slug to interfere with that. That meant I messed with my 'equal distance spacing' around the reef cringles and space them like in the pictures you are looking at.
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Above the reef points all of the slugs went back to the equal spacing (arrows).
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The slugs I got for our Mac 26S came from Sailrite and part number 23308 and are 1/2 inch in diameter. Shackles (picture above) hold the slugs to the sail at the bolt rope and you need one for each slug you get. Their part number is #24105. They also have the sail track stop to use in the mast track to contain the slugs and that number is #3543.
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The shackles are made from a very stiff nylon and are a little hard to put on the slug and bolt rope. The easiest way I found was to grab them with needle nose pliers like in the picture and then push the slug down on the shackle while prying up with the pliers and they will open and ...........
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...................snap on like in the picture.
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Use the same method to leverage it over the bolt rope at your marks (picture above).
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Then you finish by screwing the supplied screw into the shackle. Here are the two that are close together at the head of the sail. This spacing has worked great for us. Once I got the shackles and the slugs I wondered if the grommets that were in the sail next to the slugs were for shackles and slugs. I would of used them as they also went up and down the whole length of the luff, but the shackles I had weren't long enough to reach the holes. If you have grommets like the ones in my sail you might want to look into that.
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The left arrow points to another one of the grommets and the right arrow points to the reef point cringle. Up the sail is to the left of the cringle and you can see the spacing I used that has worked fine when reefing the sail. If the sail is reefed at this cringle the slug to the left is still in the mast track and the ones to the right of the cringle are our of the track below the boom.
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Here is another shot showing the two reef points we have on our sail (left 2 arrows) and the location of the slugs, below, above and between the reef points.
This is a quick and easy mod and well worth the minimal cost. Now the main raises and lowers very easily and fast. I'll be a slug man from this point on in life.
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