Although designed with an expanded cutter rig by Bruce King - the original rig was a simple sloop with a 135% high cut jib. The J measurement on this boat is 20 feet because the mast is so far aft - this makes for a very large sail. With a cutter rig I will probably gut this down to 110% or so. The rig on this boat is already much larger than originally designed for the stock boat, with a short bowsprit and longer boom. The staysail will add about 120 sqare feet. The original but unused staysail was found in a cockpit locker. That coupled with the fact that the mast fittings were already in place made me itch to put the rig to rights!

Here I am playing with the unused but stained staysail which was setup to hoist on the fly.

During Christmas of 2001 I spent aweek aboard TATOOSH² getting in a bit of sailing and doing a bit of work. A major piece of the work accomplished was installing a nice bronze tack fitting from ABI. This was through-bolted to a heavy stainless bracket bolted to the forward bulkhead inside the chain locker. This puts the tack fitting about 6" forward of the designed location. The bracket was fabricated to the original specification, but the angle turned out to be exactly opposite the original specification so the bracket would not fit aft of the bulkhead as originally planned. The bracket was thoughbolted to the bulkead with a teak backing plate. The location change also meant moving the one cleat on the fordeck athwartshps between the windlass and tack fitting - a pretty awkward location. Eventually I will be adding a cleat on both sides of the tak fitting and will more than likely remove this cleat.

My initial plan did not include putting it on a furler - a new dyform stay and traditional hanks seemed the best way to go.

I ran across an auction for a new Hood Seafurl, and thought about how the new staysail could be handled from the cockpit - and theneed to run the halyard aft and have a downhaul - as I did on the first TATOOSH. That arrangement worked fine but that was a much smaller boat. I had installed a Profurl on the previous boat but TATOOSH² was rigged with an old Hood furler that was in good shape and seen little use. I did more research and found that Practical Sailor was impressed with Seafurl and so entered a bid and won the thing at a very good price!

Rerigging was planned for May 2002 with a trip out from Boston and a stay in sunny California. The original unused staysail was recut for the furler and a suncover added by North Sails in Oxnard. Dyform wire and rigging parts had been shipped out - so all was ready - but all was interrupted by the drowning of TATOOSH².

I had planned to spend a week aboard and very much looked forward to doing the rigging work myself. After Ventura Harbor Boatyard asked me not do any work pending survey and all that stuff - the Boatyard promised to complete the rigging work - but their promise was false. Things continued to languish until 6 months later, thinking about the poor engineless - but now dry TATOOSH, I decided to get this bit of rigging taken care of while I was sitting in cold and wintery Boston. I hired Frosty the rigger to get it all installed - so I could feel like things were moving forward. It looks good doesn't it?!