There is s solution for hooking a mainsail without requiring rotation.
The simple cable with stopper system used on a lot of dinghy jib setups could be beefed up to hold the main. These use a catch fitting that the stopper engages in. The problem is how do you un-catch it when needing to drop sail?
Well, we use a locking box with an interesting geometry on Afterburner...the halyard is pulled through the box until a swaged on stainless slug passes into the box...then drops into a notch & locks in place. To disengage, we apply more tension to the halyard, pulling the slug further through the box until it clears the notch. It is now unable to re-engage in the notch as we release the halyard.
This exact same design lock fittng is downsized and used on Marstrom Tornado forstays for jib halyards.
It still baffles me how the monohull world has yet to catch up to this novel concept
How would you propose to hook and unhook a fixed (non rotating) monohull mast? I suppose you could rig some sort of a trip line, to a mechanical catch at the top of the mast, but that seems more complex than a halyard to hold the sail up.
Bill
