How to rig a temporary Barber Hauler on a Catamaran

Following on from last week’s excellent post by SVN Magazine on Barber Haulers, this week we show how to make your own very simple Barber Hauler while on a catamaran on a sailing vacation (or on your own catamaran).

The issue is that the catamarans have their jibsheet track on the rooftop of the salon. That’s fine for close hauling, but when on a reach or run, you really need the clew of the jib sail out wider than the jibsheet track can allow – that is assuming you want another knot or so out of your boat – or you just can’t stand to let that wind go to waste.

Here is a picture of what one of our students did on a catamaran.

He tied an extra dockline (now called a Barber Hauler) around the midships cleat and then he tied a rolling hitch from the Barber Hauler around the working jibsheet. He tensioned the (new) Barber Hauler to pull down and out on the working jibsheet. He cautioned that the cleat hitch on the midships cleat must be easy to undo – meaning, to be careful the way you wrap it so that the dockline does not lock on itself under the cleat. That’s bad because it makes it hard to release when there is tension from pressure in the sail.

An alternative is to just loop the dockline around the midships cleat instead and bring it back up to a truckers hitch which is extremely easy to tension and make finer adjustments – and release.

Either way, this is pretty brilliant and very simple to rig and de-rig.