"Capt. JG" wrote in message
easolutions...
"KLC Lewis" wrote in message
...

"Capt. JG" wrote in message
easolutions...
I've had sliders get stuck even though everything looked fine... just
backed off a bit , then tried again, and it went fine.

Try sailcote also...

--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com

I've done that too, but I figure if a slide sticks going up, it could
also stick coming down -- and that could be very bad news indeed.


I've never had that problem...a quick tug on the sail, and down it comes.

--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com

Agree about the sailcote, btw -- I swear by it, and spray it on pretty much
anything that's supposed to move. Getting back to the stuck sails, though, I
sailed on an Irwin 42 once that had been having "sticking slide" problems.
Slides would stick going up, we'd ease the halyard a bit, tug on the luff,
haul away again, ease the halyard again, tug the luff again, eventually it'd
hoist all the way. Skipper wasn't worried about it, said it happened all the
time. Coming back into port we got ready to drop the main, and it wouldn't
budge. Couldn't go higher, wouldn't drop no matter what we did. Came into
the slip with the main up and several people on the finger ready to catch
lines and pull her in.

In the end it turned out that the top headboard slug was really, really
bunged up and wasn't going anywhere. Had to disconnect it to get the sail to
drop. Don't know what the final fix was, but it could have been much worse
if we had been trying to reef in rising wind. I'm assuming that there was
some galling of the internal track near the top of the hoist that caused the
slug to get mangled.