Bonnets for sails

[georgeband]

A bonnet was an extension that was attached to the bottom edge of a sail to increase the area; a reef could only make the area smaller. Steel gives good descriptions of how they were made and how they were attached. 

This is enough information for me to make a stay sail with an attached bonnet, and I know from a sub-Lieutenant's log book that this was done on HMS Whiting. What I do not know is what happens with the sheet and tack at the bottom of the sail. 

 

The stay sail would have its original sheet and tack when it is without a bonnet. When the bonnet is attached it will also need a sheet and a tack otherwise it becomes a curtain that flaps in the breeze. Do both sheets belay to the same point, and similarly do both tacks belay to one point? Or do they belay to different points? Or do the original sheet and tack become redundant and are coiled and hung somewhere out of the way? Steel is silent on this topic unless I have missed it. 

 

Any assistance will be gratefully received. 

 

George

[Kenchington]

When I do that at full size (having modified the foresail of my little boat by adding reef points, etc.), I shift the sheets and tack to the appropriate cringles -- in my case, the reef cringles or the ones at the corners of the sail, for your model the ones at the corners of the sail or those on the bonnet. I suspect (but cannot confirm) that the same was done aboard your model's prototype. The question would be: How were the lines attached to the cringles? They will certainly not have used the carabiner and spring-closed hook that I do! Did they perhaps use moused sister-hooks? Or was that a later technological development?

 

The strops of the sheet and tack blocks may have carried large wooden toggles that could be passed through large eyes worked in the boltropes (external to the canvas of the sail). I think Lees shows something of the kind, though I may be remembering an illustration in Ashley's.

 

Trevor

[popeye2sea]

Sheet Bend.

 

Regards,

 

Henry