modern rig education needed

[double u]

first time sailing with lazyjacks, first time with swept-back spreaders:
1:what do you do with your lazyjacks when you are sailing? leave them in their working position "hanging around"? they seem to have to be taken to the mast for raising the main & for shaking out the third reef (batten & leech will catch in the rearmost line of the lj)
2: swept-back spreaders:
never came around a more useless feature on a tradewind passagemaker: can't let out the main far enough, upper third of main & battens lying heavily on the shrouds, top batten bending the wrong way around the topshroud when reefed (chafed 15% through the batten on our transatlantic) no matter how strongly vanged down (multiple purchase Selden vang plus tackle to toerail plus preventer led to bow) - I expected it to get on my nerves but not that much...(unfortunately just as with saildrive & wheelsteering: impossible to get around when buying secondhand a youngish (max 10 years) boat). in theory one could tack downwind of course...could argue that there isn't that much to do on a tradewind transatlantic...one would have to head up a lot though to get the main off the shrouds...

[osprey877]

Put a small hook on each side of the boom at the gooseneck and hook the lazyjacks under them before raising the main. Deploy prior to lowering the main. The upside of the sweptback spreaders is that the mast is held in column by the shrouds and so needs less forestay load, no running backs and on many boats you don't need a backstay at all, so you can carry a much larger mainsail with larger roach. Get yourself an asymetrical spinnaker and your speed will move the apparent wind forward enough that you will still be able to sail quite deep.

[billknny]

When you are around sailboats for a while, you learn that lots of features that are popular for good reasons on race boats quickly get adapted to the consumer boat market where they are accepted as "gospel" with no critical thought whatsoever. Swept back spreaders make a lot of sense on a race boat going around buoys where nobody ever goes downwind.

As you point out, on a tradewind cruising boat they are just dumb.

They are only one of many features that people blindly accept as "good" because they racers use them. Lot of others...