First off let me apologize for what I know are to a lot of folks questions at the "IQ=3" level, but with absolutely no other Nacra sailors or even cat sailors available to ask these questions I need to turn to this forum where folks like Jake and Tim have much 5.2 experience.

I'm attaching a photo of my mast, of the starboard side here, as I can't seem to get two pictures to attach to the single entry. I have no idea what should go where, and have basically guessed. On the starboard side is a swivel cam cleat and a cheek block, and my guess was those were supposed to be used for the downhaul.

On the port side is another cheek block, a jam cleat, a hole where something was at some point in time, and towards the front, a little eye strap. I guessed that the downhaul went thru that cheek block, then up thru the middle of mast rotator, and down to the cheek block on the other side. Is that right? At present the jam cleat has the line part of the main halyard running thru it. The little eye strap on the port/front of the mast has a piece of 3/8" line, about two foot long hanging out of it going nowhere!

If anyone out there has any ideas of what should be where, of if I have guessed right on any of this, I'd sure appreciate your comments. I'll post another entry and picture of what was done with the main and jib halyards and see if you think I need to fix that too.

Dick
N5.2 #3002

Dick,

I'm not totally sure but it's similar to this which looks a bit better

http://www.f18.org.uk/tech-f18cunningham.asp

There are a few more rigging tips on line at 1design.net, a great website mostly used by the Florida I20 sailors, but you will find some good info there. The link is a pic of the downhaul system.
Good luck,
David Mosley
www.teamseacats.com
Rigging Tips Page(Thanks Dave Ingram)

IF you want to post two pictures, you either have to upload them somewhere on the internet and make html reference to them in the post, or make two posts...

Unfortunately this is the only picture I have with any detail of the mast...but I think It might help. The headbangers and the cheek blocks you have on the side of the mast are for the downhaul but you should have a triple pulley attached to the hook that you put on the sail. Your rope should go through the starboard headbanger, up to one side of the triple pulley, down to the cheek block on the side of the mast, up to the middle of the triple pulley, down to the port cheek block, up to the triple pulley and finally to the port headbanger. This gives you a 6:1 downhaul and is adjustable from either side of the mast (as long as the other side remains cleated). I think class legal on the 5.2 is 7:1 but this should be plenty.

On the port side of the mast, there is likely an extra cheek block near the v-jam cleat. The hole you have may have been where the cheek block was. You are correct that the v-jam cleat is for the jib halyard, however, the cable end of the jib halyard should have a small pulley on it too. I tied a short rope tail to my jib halyard cable so I could remove the long halyard while sailing. The tail should be tied off (permenantly) to the open eye on the end of the cable, go through a cheek block on the side of the mast, up to the pulley on the end of the halyard cable, and to the v-jam cleat. This gives you 3:1 purchase on the jib halyard.

And you'll notice that I also have a small piece of line tied to an eye strap on the front of the mast. I used this to connect my halyards to for trailering. In your case, the line may have been used to tie the base of the mast to the dolphin striker before the mast was upgraded to the captive mast base with the pin. Old 5.2 mast bases simply had a cup that sat on the ball - stepping them were difficult because they could just leave the ball if you didn't keep enough downward pressure on them. The new Nacra system (which you have) uses the pin to temporarily keep the mast base on the ball while stepping...always remove the pin for sailing so you don't become the nut in a nut cracker in the event of a rigging failure.

You probably hadn't fully rigged it but I noticed that both ends of your rotation limiter should go through that bail on the boom - this keeps it properly aligned for the jam cleat.