mast mounting for lazy jacks

[billdre]

I just bought a lazy jack system for my O'Day 28. In this case it is setup with blocks mounted on both sides of the mast so the primary jack lines are adjustable. I was thinking of using cheek blocks mounted on an elevated base of one or two inches to widen the mouth of the lazy jacks by a few inches. Has anyone tried this? The idea is to lessen the issue with battens catching on the legs of the lazy jacks when raising the sails, which is a complaint I see regularly about lazy jacks. What's your experience? Thanks.

[roverhi]

Not sure what the Lazy Jack system you've got but I used small cheek blocks mounted on the mast about 1/2 way between spreader and masthead. I bring the LJ's forward and hook under their cleat on the mast when not being used. No problem with them hooking the battens with the LJ's out of the way.

Doubt that mounting the cheek blocks outboard by a few inches would have any effect at all on their affinity for catching the battens on the sail.

[tenchiki]

As an experiment (which is working pretty OK), I ran a piece of bungy from the end of each spreader. The lazy jack line runs through an eye at the end of the bungy about 1/2 the length of the spreader. It seems to do a decent job of making a bigger space for the battens, and keeping things from catching. In hind sight, I should have put the cheek blocks higher up the mast, though. I didn't trust the spreaders to be strong enough to hold any load with the blocks a foot or so out from the mast. With the bungy, any loads are mostly in compression, or slightly aft. I expect the bungy to stretch to minimize loads on the spreaders.

I have a 24ft boat, so the spreaders are about 3ft long, so for length, YMMV.