This is my first post. I’ve been a member of the association for a number of years, although I’ve not used “Cleo” Super Seal No. 21 as often as I would like, but hopefully things are changing. Whenever I have encountered fellow members you have all been so welcoming. Thank you.

I sail mainly by myself and wish to be able to reef the main from the cockpit. The one thing that stops me at the moment is the mast gate. I need to go to the mast to feed / wiggle the slugs past the gate. (I have 2 line reefing)
My current gate consists of 2 flat aluminium plates that sit each side of the gate. One is riveted to the mast and the other has a wing nut which allows it to pivot so that the main sail can be removed.

I’m thinking of modifying the plates by adding some epoxy to the under sides of them and shaping it to the interior contour of the mast slot so that there is no longer a lip. This hopefully will allow the slugs to slide past the gate with me still in the cockpit.
Does this make sense? I’m wondering how others have mast gates that enable them to reef from the cockpit?
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http://www.parkerseal.or...=posts&t=275#post275  from 10 years ago where John Elliot said the following. “In 18 kts apparent I put in a reef single-handed in 30 secs. without leaving the cockpit.”

This is my dream!!!! I would appreciate input.
Cheers,
Noel.

Hi Noel. I had the same setup as you on my previous boat (Jaguar 23, twin line reefing) and spent a long time working on the shape and size of the two plates each side of the mast gate. My strips were made of stainless steel, which was much thinner than aluminium and so caused less of a catching point for sail sliders (slugs). I used m4 cap head bolts as these had a very low profile, and tapped the mast to receive them. The other massive improvement I made was to apply a liberal amount of McLube sailkote to sliders and mast 'groove'. Made a big difference.

My current boat, SS26 "Mistral", has a newish mast by Z-spars that has a screw in blocking piece that sits in mast gate with all sliders above it in groove. I'm currently installing twin line reefing on her and haven't yet worked out how to set up this aspect of things, but will post a few pics here in next few weeks when I get started on it.

Thank you Fred, I was going to do some fettling with aluminium, but now take on board what you are saying with regard to using stainless to reduce risk of snagging.