mainsail slugs

[Capt Dave]

Has anyone install slugs to their mainsail on their daysailer? I have a friend that has a larger O'day with slugs attached to his mainsail making the hoisting of the sail a breeze and I was thinking of installing them on my daysailer II. Any advise?

[mkwmson]

Capt Dave,

I recently lost one of the slugs on the mainsail of my DS1 and had to replace it and I wanted a spare. I looked on several websites as well as at a West Marine store. I had difficulty finding a matching diameter of the slug slide. My existing ones, as measured with a caliper were 3/8", but the 3/8" marked new slugs were not actually 3/8". They were more like 7/16". No one on a website could give me an actual dimension of theirs either. I ended up measuring the groove in my mast and confirming that I could use a slightly larger one and purchasing it from West Marine. I works fine.

Mike

[kokko]

I use slugs on my DS1 and my Catalina 22. I would never go back to the boltrope.

I keep my mains hanked on, so you need a track stop below the lowest slug so the sail doesn't spill out. Here's the tricky part (not really). THe lowest slug is below the reef point, so I do not put that slug in the track. Now I can reef directly without removing and then reinserting the reef stop. Having the lowest slug loose does not seem to effect the performance of the sail.

[jeadstx]

I recently had sail slugs added to my mainsail, but have not been able to use it since the lake is so low there are no longer useable boat ramps. The sailmaker that installed the slugs put a special slug at my reef point (had him also install reef points) for when the sail is reefed to prevent problems. The boat I learned to sail on was an O'Day Mariner 2+2 and it had slugs on the main.

John