Where to place (best) cleats for the boats jib sheets

Locally to where I sail there a two quite disinct cuts of Mirror jib. Old boats which are falling to pieces (like mine) normally use a high clewed jib which has a long luff which extends full length of the forestay. The whizzy race boats all seem to use dark red mini genoas with sail windows. I think the foot and leech lengths are the same but the luff of the race boats is much shorter.

The old type jibs normally sheet to fairleads on the side tank tops and the race boats tend to put their fairleads on the centre thwart, one each side. Setting up the jib fairleads is described in Guy Wilkin's book "Mirror Racing" He suggests 2metres from the jib tack and an angle of 14 degrees from the centreline. If the book is out of print there are secondhand copies in Amazon for less than £3 delivered to the UK. Highly reccommended by me.

As an alternative contact the sailmaker who made the jib

If you fix into the side tank tops you will need something stronger than the 5mm ply to screw into. You could bodge it like I did and glue a ply pad onto the top of the tank or do the job properly by fitting a pad in from underneath.

Once you have the fairleads in place you can fit the cam cleats. The sheet needs to pass from the fairlead over the centre of the two cams of the cam cleat and directly into your hand. When you adjust the jib sheet you will probably have the tiller extension and mainsheet in your "aft" hand and you adjust the jib sheet with your "fore" hand. Choose some cleats which comfortably hold the size of sheet you are using. Quite a big cleat is needed for a 10mm sheet. Our local racers use 7mm but I like comfort and my big hands can't grip thin rope.

Getting the relationship between the fairlead and the cleat correct will take a little trial and error and it might be worth screwing the fittings into a piece of wood and trying out your jib sheet in them before drilling the boat. The gap between the fairlead and the cleat needs to be sensible (about an inch and a half) and you might find you need spacers under the cleat to raise it up. You can make these from plywood to the same shape as the base plate of the cam cleat or buy them from the manufacturer of the cleat.

Be careful if you dismantle the cleats. Sometimes the springs jump out. Make sure all the bits are put back in the right order the right way up.

When you are sure on the positions drill the boat. Put a little bit of varnish down the holes to seal up the wood and screw them down with stainless steel screws. The screws don't need to be very tight, just wind them in nicely but check them from time to time to make sure they are not becoming loose. The wood will stretch and shrink as it becomes wet then dry and it will take a while for everything to bed in nicely.

Cliff

Hi Cliff
My old type fairleads are on the gunwale, with the sheet outside the shrouds. I sometimes try pulling the sheet inboard a bit, which might help, but have not found a way of achieving this conveniently. I then find that, when running, the jib sheet is trapped inside the shrouds, which hooks the sail.
David

For years, Puffin's jibsheet fairleads and cleats sat on aluminium plates screwed to the gunwales at the same general position as on most older Mirrors, see below:

I had intended to move them inboard to improve upwind performance (i.e. sail a few degrees higher upwind), but shirked the effort. While I was painting the bottom in 2011, the trestles under my boat tipped over, resulting in two holes in the side tanks:

Thus I had reason to put patches on the deck anyway and decided to use these as reinforced mounts for the jam-cleat/fairlead combination:

I never used a compass to check how close to the wind I can sail, but I do have the feeling that it has helped to move them inboard. As I sail on lakes and rivers most of the year, this is important for saving you a few tacks when you're going upwind on narrow stretches of water, especially if you are obliged by law to dodge all commercial shipping such as the '#@&$$! excursion boats.
Gernot H.

The painter attachment was already there when I bought "Puffin".
The picture was taken while anchored after swimming on the last day of the first "JollenFlottille" meeting in 2010. It is in the report http://mirrordiscussforum.org/documents/stories/Jollen-Flotille_2010.pdf which, unfortunately, I have never rewritten in English. It does contain a lot of pretty pictures, though.
We were towed home from Zingst to Barth by the "motorized" participants on the evening of the first day, though. Our outing even made it into a glossy sailing magazine in that year ("Segeln" 10/2010, Pp. 90 ... 93 which started with the following picture:

Someone had taken a picture of me taking a picture ! Now that the magazine's copyright has expired, Daniel, the author, has re-published the article on his home page at http://retrosailing.npage.de/jollen_flottille_2010_98201360.html .
Everything battened down for the winter?
Cheers,
Gernot.

I think it has a different name but it's the lump of hardwood on the front of the bow transom for the forestay chainplate screws to fasten into. Many Mirrors had a fitting for a painter here (mine included). It was usually an eye plate fastened to the boat with four screws. The original Mirrors used an identical part for the forestay and shroud anchors.

Drilling a hole of a precise depth is often done by wrapping sticky tape around the drill bit as a depth gauge. I would aim to drill just the hardwood and not the ply behind it. If the process all goes to pieces and you end up poking the drill all the way through it is far from a disaster. Annoint the inside of the hole with a piece of wire dipped in epoxy then trowel/squeeze some thickened epoxy into the hole with the corner of something shaped like a credit card. As you drive the screw in it will push the thickened epoxy down the hole and seal everything up. As usual all drilled holes for fittings should be sealed with glue or varnish to prevent/delay rot. Stainless steel screws are far better than brass.

In my experience attaching a painter here can be a bit awkward as if you drop it over the side it's tricky to get it back on board. If one wants to anchor or pick up a mooring this becomes more significant. It's also not good to have trailing lines if you use an outboard.

I prefer to tie my painter around the base of the mast with an anchor bend (don't tie in the halyard tails!). I have a fairlead on the bow. If I drop my painter I can recover it from the base of the mast. I normally lead the painter back to the cockpit outside the shroud so I can drop an anchor or sail up to a mooring without having to work on the foredeck.

Cliff

I made the fairleads out of hardwood, and bolted them right through. Most of my critical fixings are bolted through - forestay and chain plates for instance. I drill an oversize hole, coat it inside with epoxy using a baby bud, then insert the bolt once it is hard. You can see the fairleads in my "Mirror Mods" video at the following URL (44 seconds in):-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1Ny7r9P5OQ
Sorry, I don't know how to upload a photograph here.
David

Hi David,

Being a Mirror expert I have to tell you that your Mirror is out of class. You know what an expert is don't you? An expert is a person who with great skill is able to shoot water out of a bodily orifice. Which orifice you ask? In my case the mouth. :-> If my fellow Mirror sailors in the Ontario Mirror Dinghy Association would hear of me proclaiming expertise they would fall over laughing,

My Mirror also is out of class and I don't care one wit. I do admire your modifications and it was great to see you in the video. Most of the people on this forum are faceless to us.

Pete