Hi SeaBreezers,

To begin at the beginning, I must pay my respects to all those whose posts on this forum have been an invaluable source of knowledge and wisdom. Many thanks for being so generous with your experience.

As background, I bought my first yacht, a Currawong 30 located at Pittwater, in May of this year but being in Melbourne, we have only be able to visit her once during the brief period between lock downs. I'm planning the delivery trip (with a qualified delivery skipper) to the Gippsland Lakes for December this year. In the meantime, I'm arranging to have both the standing and running rigging replaced. The standing rigging is at least 17 years old and most of the running rigging is in poor condition (the jib furling line parted while sailing during our visit). Unfortunately, it doesn't look as though we will be able to get up to Pittwater when the work is being done due to the current lock down.

I would appreciate some guidance on a couple of things.

First, given that the mast will be out when the standing rigging is replaced this would be a good time to check for any corrosion. Previous posts on Currawongs and Brolgas suggest checking the base of the mast and the plate on which it sits. Any other areas specific to these boats that would be worth investigating?

Second, I'm expecting that most of our time sailing will be single or short-handed. To make this easier and safer, I'd like to run the sail controls back to the cockpit, most are currently at the mast. And here I must thank Ramona for sending me a drawing of the rope arrangement on his Currawong 30. I'm not sure a novice such as I could cope with 18 lines at the cockpit.

So, what sail controls would you recommend be brought back to the cockpit as a compromise between complexity, ease of use and efficient sailing? At present, I'm converging on the following: main halyard, vang, outhaul, main topping lift, Cunningham, first reef tack, first reef clew, second reef tack, second reef clew (the current main has only 2 reefing points). This is a total of 9 controls. It's possible we could leave out the topping lift and use a spring vang to get this down to 8.

A search of previous SeaBreeze posts turned up an interesting discussion of reefing systems but I didn't find any discussion on which controls should be brought back. Perhaps personal preference plays too large a part?

Thanks again for all past help and in advance for this help.

Cheers, Peter