REEFING AND UNREEFING THE MAIN- SAIL AND JIB OF VESSELS
Year: 1868

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Captain Johannes Jensen at
the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on
the 22nd December 1868.
I, Captain JOHANNES JENSEN, of Bergen, Norway, do hereby declare.
the nature of the said Invention for "REEFING AND UNREEFING THE MAIN-
SAIL AND JIB OF VESSELS," to be as follows:-
The Mainsail. The mainsail to be rolled upon à boom, on which the.
foot rope of the sail is fastened; the boom is placed over the main
boom in two davits which are fastened on each end of the main boom
where the reef boom turns. At the fore end of the reef boom is a wheel
where the one end of the reef line is made fast and turned up, the other
end is fastened to a windlass placed on the deck underneath the wheel
and the main boom. On the middle of the reef boom one end of a piece
of sinnet is fastened and the other end is put through a buckle-formed
hook which grabs round the reef boom. A piece of parsling is served
on the sack whereon the rollers belonging to the mast hoops revolve
when reefing or unreefing the sails. On the fore side of the reef wheel

page_text: there is a comb wheel for the pall. The uppermost hoop is fastened to
the claw of the gaff at a proper distance from the gaff, and the other
mast hoops are fastened to each other at proper distances. A line is
fastened to the lowermost hoop and again made fast to the mast head
through a block, and so passes down to the deck. The main boom rests
as usual on the collar of the mast, the boom lifts, and sheet also as usual.
The gaff is furnished with a claw and claw and peak haliard. The
advantages of reefing the mainsail by this method is the saving of time
and of life, the facility with which it can be accomplished, and the few
hands required to do it,
The Jib. The jib stay is placed on the masthead as usual, and on
the jib boom there is a traveller, where the jib stay is reefed through an
eye, and passes through a sheave hole in the outer end of the jib boom
and set up on the gallant forecastle. Near the eye of the traveller
there is a hook. The jib is bent as usual to the hoops. In the jib's
tack is placed a three-holed thimble. The thimble underneath the jib's
tack is hooked on to the hook of the traveller. On the stay rope in the
jib's reef band a thimble is spliced, through which a line is reefed, and
passing on each side the jib goes through the three-holed thimble in the
tack, and is here spliced together, leaving one end long; this end being
spliced to a block, and through this block a haliard is reefed. In the
sheet of the jib there is a seven-holed thimble with a hook on the
upper end, in the after leach rope of the jib a thimble is spliced in
the reef band; in this thimble there is a shackle, and in the extreme
end of this shackle is a roller. The reef band is furnished with the
necessary reef holes. On each side of the jib's foot ropes small thimbles
are fastened, placed underneath the reef holes. In the reef holes the
reef line is reefed through going through the thimbles of the foot ropes,
where they are fastened together. From the fore thimble in the foot
rope's reef line a line is spliced fast to the next reef line, this again to
the next, and so on. The end of this line is carried through the lower
hole in the sheet thimble; the two first reef lines from the after leach
ropes are reefed through their corresponding thimbles in the foot rope,
and from there through the holes in the sheet thimble. In the roller
of the shackle which is placed in the thimble in the after leach rope of
the jib a line is reefed through and fastened to one of the holes in the
sheet thimble. The sheet and haliard as usual. A line is spliced to

page_text: the traveller with a block at the end, through which the haliard is
reefed.
The advantages of reefing the jib in the above manner is the saving
of life, the speed with which it can be performed, its economy, and
enabling one to haul in the jib instantaneously, liko a fore stay sail.