So, for those of you with lazy jacks, consider doing only one side. The Lazy Jacks guide the mainsail up and down from the Stack Pack and. Lazy jacks (or lazyjacks) are a type of rigging which can be applied to a fore-and-aft rigged sail to assist in sail handling during reefing and furling. The drill is: after the main is raised, I unhook that starboard lazy jack, so they're both ready to go when we drop the sails at the end of the day. Rule of thumb: If you think setting a reef might be a good idea, do it. Nautos using ball bearing blocks to reduce friction. Yes, we have to go forward again to unhook the starboard lazy jack for dousing the sail if I forget to do it right when the main is raised, but there's never any hurry. We then raise the mainsail and it doesn't get hooked on the lazy jacks even though the port side jacks are still there. Then, when we raise the mainsail, instead of going exactly head to wind, we bear off a tad to starboard so the wind is coming from the port side of the bow. When we put the halyard on the headboard, we move ONLY the starboard side of the lazy jacks forward and snug them under the forward side of the horn of this cleat. My lazyjacks are simply 1/4' nylon braided lines with thimbled eyes on end - one line goes up the mast and back down, another from forward part of the boom up through the eye and down again and yet another from middle of the boom to the eye on second line and down to the back end of the boom. We have a small cleat on the forward starboard side of the boom. We developed an easier way with our lazy jacks. They then spend a lot of time moving BOTH sides of the lazy jacks to the mast. Many folks complain about full battens getting caught up when raising the mainsail. Click to expandThere are alternatives, too:

Rule to design a lazy jack