I wanted a way to reduce the complexity of the main sail on my Weekender. It has a Gaff Rigged mainsail, and the plans call for it to have 2 halyards, one to haul the yard up the mast (the Throat Halyard) and another to set the angle of the yard (the Peak Halyard.) I suppose if you were a sailor who knew what he was doing, there would be wonderful possibilities afforded by the infinite variety of settings you could do for the yard depending on the wind speed, direction, time of day, day of the week, phase of the moon, or any number of other variables.

Personally, I'd rather have one rope to deal with, then figure out how to get the most out of my sail in a given condition. I am too inexperienced (and too ambivalent) to care about the proper setting of the gaff, and there is a little bit of me that thinks the 'gaff enthusiasts' out there are just a little full of themselves.

Still, a suitable system of raising and lowering the mainsail must be found.

Knowing that boats are the oldest form of vehicle ever created by man, I knew that someone, somewhere, some time in human history, had already tried all possible solutions. I started looking in the most obvious place - the website for the guys who build and own Weekenders: Back Yard Yacht Builders (http://www.bybb.org). On ther was a link to the Gaff Rig website (http://www.messing-about.com/gaffrig/gaffdeat.htm) and in there was a section on halyards. And one of the 8 pictures of possible halyard rigs was of a single halyard set up.