Hi, Robbin Someone with an older 17 will have to address the jib sheet block for your style toe-rail, but I think I can maybe help a bit with the turnbuckles: If your standing rigging is original, I would strongly suggest replacing it. Rigging does eventually fatigue or corrode. The life is considerably longer in freshwater than salt, but it still fatigues, especially on boats that get trailered and the rigging gets handled a lot. Usually there is some warning in the form of meathooks, broken strands, but occasionally it can be missed until it is too late. You can buy replacement rigging from Jerry for a very reasonable price. Yes, turnbuckles will loosen themselves if they aren't locked in some manner. I leave my backstay turnbuckle unlocked and during the course of a two week trip find myself having to tighten it sometimes. My forestay and shrouds turnbuckles are locked. Jam nuts, as you describe, are one way, but the only trouble with them is engine vibration which can frequently stealthily loosen them. A more secure way is to safety wire them. Your favorite chandlery probably offers a small spool of monel wire just for that purpose. Your turnbuckle threaded ends, studs, should have a small hole through them near their ends. You thread the wire through that and tie off to the body, twisting the ends together with a pair of pliers. You do that twice on each turnbuckle, once for each "half" of it. Then, if you tuck the twisted ends in so nothing can hang up on them, you are good to go. If the ends hang out, you will want to wrap them with tape so as to avoid tearing a sail or snagging yarns in your sheets. All this assumes open body turnbuckles, the preferred type. If you happen to have closed, or tubular type, turnbuckles you likely can't use safety wire and have to rely on the jam nuts. A penetrating oil such as PB Blaster or Liquid Wrench may help with the jam nuts, even soaking them over night. But there is also a risk that the threads, if the nuts are stainless, are galled, a nasty quality that stainless can have whereby the surface of the threads kind of ball up. At that point, I'd replace the rigging. Tod Mills M17 #408 ('87) BuscaBrisas -----Original Message----- From: montgomery_boats-bounces+htmills=bright.net@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:montgomery_boats-bounces+htmills=bright.net@mailman.xmission.com ] On Behalf Of Robbin Roddewig Sent: Friday, December 08, 2006 4:54 PM To: For and about Montgomery Sailboats Subject: M_Boats: M-17 blocks on rail and floating mast Hi Folks, on my second outing with my '75 M-17 Miss Take, my son home on Thanksgiving break noted that the lines from the jib were not coming in at an angle that allowed the winches to work. He had lots of experience with winches during his season on Lake Superior (Brrr). Upon referencing some of the other photos on the web site I realized that the blocks that should apparently be on the toe rail to guide the lines are not there on my boat. Any suggestions on how to order these and how they install on the rail? Also, one of the turnbuckles had come unscrewed when I checked on the boat today at the marina. The winds are hitting 35mph gusts and my thought was that it would be a bad thing if the mast decided to crash due to lack of support. The turnbuckles have nuts at either end but they are mostly frozen in place. Any suggestions on fixing this beyond trying to break loose the nuts and using those to lock the turnbuckles? Anyone else had there turn buckles unscrew themselves? Thanks in advance Robbin

_______________________________________________ http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/montgomery_boats

Audasea has the open metal toe rails found on the older M17's and she came with a pair of snatch blocks to use as jib fair leads:

I have the metal toe rails as well. Very handy. I am forever changing sheeting angle and the rail makes it easy. Yes a track would be even easier but the rail works well for attaching all kinds of stuff. Spinnaker sheets etc.

http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/producte/10001/-1/ 10001/245850/0/0/snatchblock/All_2/mode+matchallpartial/0/0> You can easily move them up and down the rail as needed for each sail. Looks aside, my preference is the metal toe rails because of all those handy attachment points. I use them all the time.

Snatch blocks would be the dogs bollix. I hadn't even considered a snatch for this but what a great idea. I just use a regular 2 1/4 -ish unit on a snap shackle. It can be an interesting process moving one of these under load. Of course you can luff up or just loose the sheet to gedderdone, but sometimes the challenge is fun.

I had a turnbuckle work loose once on the road. Others galled and froze. Bottom line is I eventually replaced all 6 of them and glad I did. I would check all the rigging and all connection points on each end, replacing anything that looks suspicious. Especially so on the fore and back stays. Loosing a mast will ruin you day.

I had a complete dismasting on my other sailboat last year. All because the ring style cotter pin somehow disappeared on one of the side stays. A clevis pin worked its way loose...on the windward side..... closehauled.....like a dream. Sailing along at hull speed tweaking sails, just marveling at the beautiful, hot (windy) day and bam.....the whole thing just slowly falls over into the water. Complete with a movie-like sound effects.Thing is, something has to give. In this case, it was the mast. Spruce. Now in three major pieces. Those wires are a tiny bit important. ~:0) How the dang cotter ring came off, I will never know. I suspect a neighborhood kid thought it would be fun to play with maybe. It doesn't matter either way...I should have checked more closely when I rigged. I did adjust that turnbuckle....I wish I had just looked more closely. I can't imagine how I missed not seeing a missing cotter. Lesson learned: You can bet I check the rig every time out now. Cheers. Tim Diebert M17 'Puff' #369..... and my old gaffer 'Annie M'......currently stickless.