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....................................................................--- Slug Gate ---

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One of our next projects (early summer 2010) was for Ruth to sew up a sail cover/sail pack/lazy jack combination. We wanted to get the sail as close to the boom as possible. Stock the mast slot is pretty wide for a ways above the boom to allow you to start the bolt rope up inside the mast. We had the year before converted out sail over to slugs and in the spring of 2010 we bought a new furler genoa and a new main from Somerset Sails (call Martin and tell him Sumner sent you).

The Main was loose footed and also came with slugs for the mast. When lowering the main in order to keep the slugs from falling out we had to use a slug stop in the mast slot. That meant that the lowest most slug was still about 8-10 inches above the boom and is one of the reasons sail covers go up the mast so high, since the stack of slugs above the stop leaves the flaked sail a ways up the mast.

OK by now you are tired of reading this, so on with making a solution for the problem....a slug gate.

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I started by welding a length of 1/2 inch diameter solid aluminum rod to a pieces of 1/4 by 1 1/2 aluminum strap (both from the hardware store).

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Next I milled a slot down the middle of the strap and then....

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....I went out to the boat with the mast up and inserted it down the mast slot and marked (arrow) where the slot started to widened and cut it off there. Make it long and then fit it in place and mark and cut it.

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Here it is inserted back into the mast and you can see where I cut it was right where the slot started to get wider.

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Here you can see a practice/trial slug in the gate and see it is a lot closer to the gooseneck than if it would of been above a stop which would of been near the top of the picture. I think I could of quit there, but I wanted to make it a little beefier so.....

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... I welded two lengths of 3/8 solid aluminum rod to the back side of the track (arrows).

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Here is a view of the front side that faces out on the mast.

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Here the track has been inserted back into the mast and the arrows point to the ends of the round bar. The track opening was ground a little to make a smoother approach into the track for the slugs.

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To use the track the main is raised so that the slugs are above the track area and the track/gate is just put into the mast slot and pushed down. It kind of wedges in there against the back of the gooseneck. The arrow points to the bottom end of the rod on the gate.

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Here it is in place after the main has been raised. It will just ride there until it is time to lower and remove the main from the mast at the end of our trip.

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Here you can see the main is down and flaked. It sits very low against the boom this way. Normally the bottom slug would be up above the arrow. The arrow points to about where the slug stop would be positioned. The top slug and sail would be off the top of the picture.

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Here is a ( Link to a You TubeVideo) showing the placement of the slug gate and how it works. Hope this helps someone else,

Sum

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