In my John's Sharpie

Posted by Charlie Jones on Oct 19, 2004

I am currently planning the installation of a third mast step, just so when the winds are up we can sail with one sail. Most of the original sharpies carried a third step. John felt that the third step would steal too much room from the forward bay, but we have decided to live with that. For us, the third step makes a lot of sense since where we sail here on the Texas coast we have stronger winds and we are a light crew for the boat. According to my calculations it should fall exactly four feet forward of the main mast step.

My intention is to leave the foremast home and move the main up when we start out in stronger air. If we get caught out, we'll drop the fore and move the mainmast forward to the new step, leaving the foremast standing. An additional benefit of this is we can sail with just the one sail and have the room forward of that mast to stand and cast to fish;)

As you can see, I refer to the masts differently than the plans do. I use the terminology from traditional sharpies. Makes more sense to us anyway.

In Response to: sailing johs sharpie by Irl Weatherford on Oct 19, 2004

Replies:

• Re: In my John's Sharpie by Mark Camp on Oct 22, 2004