I disagree. Personally, I sail a Freedom 36 with a 500 sf main, solid
vang and lazyjacks. The boat was never meant to have a traditional
topping lift. In fact, it was originally designed with the lazyjacks
AS the topping lift. The trend today is to fractional rigs with full
roached mains. These preclude a toppinglift due to interference with
the roach. Using a topping lift to flake your main and then have to
constantly adjust it to keep from fouling the roach is silly. If you
have and use a topping lift, the Dutchman works, if not, use lazy
jacks.

On 2 Mar 2006 12:28:13 -0600, Dave wrote:

On Thu, 02 Mar 2006 12:59:33 -0500, Marc wrote:

The Duthman is a partial answer at best. They are impractical for full
batten full roached mains as they need a topping lift to operate.
Sailors with full roached mains want to get RID of topping lifts,
hence the advent of solid vangs. Kind of stupid to sail with a topping
lift only for the purpose of flaking your main. A well designed
lazyjack system is the answer for all applications.

Foolish statement. The most that can be said based on the above is
that a lazyjack system is better if you are a racer with such a large
roach that the topping lift interferes with it.