2 days until launch puzzling it together.

This boat is a 1976 Mirage over the years it has had three previous owners making me the 4th. Today I'm starting the work of rigging her.  Each owner surely brought their own ideas and flare to modifying and improving the rigging and today I am puzzling together what goes where and how. I started by tuning in the mast.  I'm not sure exactly what the tensions numbers are supposed to be on a Mirage 24.  After scouring the internet the best I could come up with were tension numbers for a C&C 25. So I started slightly below those numbers for tuning and straightening the mast. After a little turnbuckle tweaking, I was satisfied with the mast column and the ease of it all.  The adjustable backstay in another super nice addition to this boat, I've missed from my previous boats. 

Next, I moved to the foredeck.  The last owner had used the boat in a few races with his grandson although I think they were racing J.A.M.  He made some modifications over the winter to the running rigging set up and we had spent some time talking about the changes prior to my purchasing the boat. In my last post the block that got stuck under the mast while we were stepping it was one of his new modifications.  He lowered the blocks for the halyard, topping lift and down hall to the mast step.  The theory is that the lower to the deck the better the angle will be for all the lines run back to the cockpit. This is a pretty standard set up for standard symmetric spinnaker so there is not a lot of sorting to be done and things pretty much go where they go no fan fair here. The wire jib halyard was also pretty easy to sort out seems we used it back on Thursday to step the mast.  

Now it was time to pop open my rigging box and start on the aft deck.  The boom, mainsheet, and boom vang were the logical place to start. On this boat the boom gooseneck slide on to a track at the mast. Then once the mainsail is bent on the whole track move up and acts as a sail stop. Everything on this boat is so adjustable I love it. 

With those sorted, I moved on the topping lift.  There are several options here. I'm not sure which of the cheek blocks are for the slab reefing. Likely all of them so for now, I have settled on a single block near the back of the boom but I sure liked the way it looked in the cheek block. 

Now the fun part I put the mainsail on and moved the boom track up to lock it all in.  The cunningham is a bit of a mystery. There are several cheek blocks mounted to that mast some are for the reefing and there are two cleats labeled for it. So here I did my best guessing and suspect changes will be occurring as I bring my own flare to the rig's design. 

The breeze is also starting to pick up so I secured the sail and will have to sort out all the reefing lines sometime after the boat is in the water.