Had some good heavy air sailing today. I left the marina at around 1330 and motored out to where I could turn into the wind and raise the mainsail. I killed the motor and fell off the wind to reach across the lake. As I came out of the lee of the shore I was hit with the full force of the wind and a shift as well. I turned back into the wind and pulled a quick reef in the sail. I did a few gibes and fiddled with the idea of a 2nd reef but decided against it, however I left the clutch for that line partialy up/locked position. I did at least one hard gibe before running down towards the bridge about 2 miles up river. That was where the mainsheet in the fiddle blocks for the traveler must have looped over the clutch handle and snapped it off (I didn’t notice until I was back at the dock).
Arriving at the bridge I decided to reach into the lee of an island to drop the main and power back to the marina. If I had crew I probably would have done a controlled gibe and reached back to my marina but I chickened out. As it was I powering thru white caps at a 45 degree angle and sending spray all the way back to the transom. God, I wish I had crew along! It would have been great planing under sail!
Now, to the point…
I can’t be the first person who has needed to replace their rope clutch levers.
Where does one find replacement levers?
If they are no longer available, what brand/model have you used to replace your clutches?
If changing brands what is the best way to seal the old bolt holes (I assume the new clutches will not be able to reuse the old mounting holes)?
Your clutches are Easylock 1’s. The replacement handles only come in black these days. I know you can get them from thechandleryonline.com in Ottawa, Canada, but you should also be able to order them in the US from Scandvik, the north american distributor. They come up at RigRite.com too, but there’s something weird going on with RigRite’s home page.
I ordered the replacement levers on Monday through Defender Marine and they were delivered yesterday. I ordered enough to replace all 8 levers. Dfender had the dropp shipped from Scandvik. I am on my way to the marina to install them as soon as I log off.
I found that those levers get brittle with age and if you dont pull of the sheet while pressing the lever down it causes way to much pressure on the handle. Even if you know that every crew member has to be reminded not to lock handle down without simultaneously pulling on the sheet. Eventually you find some clever crew that decides the best way to lock it is to just stand on it, yeah that really happened. But that wasn’t as bad as his next trick, falling backwards dwn the companion way with a jar of urine in his hand. And people ask why I sail alone so much. Numbknots
Trying to get my new F25 commissioned and sailing before winter! I am waiting for a mast step, but thought I would try out the rope clutches to make sure they worked. I was able to feed the halyards thru OK, but when I went to close the clutches I had to practically lean all of my body weight on the levers to get them to close. Is this normal?
The plastic looks old and cracked, and I can’t immagine it will hold up to much use given the amount of force I was using. I tried the halyard in all of the clutches with pretty much the same result - they held great, but required what seemed to me an excessive amount of force to close. The halyard was 5/16", which is what my manual says it should be for the F25.
