Traveling with spars and sails is common and preferred for competitive Opti sailors. It keeps the rigging setup consistent. It’s always easier to use the gear you know than learning the nuances of chartered gear. Warning, this article is technical. It goes over the things that usually get in the way when chartering and can affect performance. In general, this is only relevant for sailors who have reached peak performance.

As a reminder, you don’t usually travel with blades. It’s usually enough to let the charter company know if you need soft or hard blades. The brand they use will match the brand of the boat you are chartering. There have been changes to the width of the daggerboard, and it’s not guaranteed that your blades will fit all boat brands. Using your blades requires matching them to the boat brand. You will need to charter the same brand of boat you use and the manufacturing year if your blades are older. I recommend you just charter the same brand of boat you use.

In general, the goal of a good charter scenario is that nothing changes for your sailor when using a chartered boat and gear. Everything is familiar and behaves as they expect. It’s particularly important to minimize last-minute changes or adjustments to their gear. Changes lead to unnecessary stress for your sailor or coach, and depending on the severity of the change, it can throw them off their game. For most sailors, these are the main things to consider when chartering (in order of priority).

The Position of the Bridle Ring.

The Bridle is the line that holds the boom and connects it to the mainsheet block. By USODA regulation, it should not be separated from the boom by more than 10 cm when tensioned. The latest USODA rules do not allow for an adjustable bridle ring (that moves along the bridle line). Instead, they do not limit the number of rings you can put on the bridle.

When your sailor is tall enough that a centered position on the bridle ring is no longer adequate, it’s necessary to add or move the ring to a different position (more about that in this article). In my experience, most chartered booms do not have two rings. If they do, the front ring is not far enough for our needs. To make it worse, most charter companies don’t like you removing their bridle line. When we have to travel light, at a minimum, we take our smaller travel tube that fits the boom with the sail wrapped on it. Only when traveling to Europe, where the cost can be north of US$600 to travel with a tube, do we consider using a chartered boom.

The Deck Collar and Mast Sleeve.

There are two types of deck collar systems: the Optiparts Deck Collar and Sleeve and the smaller Optiparts Low-Friction Deck Collar. The first requires a sleeve on the mast and gives more room to adjust the mast rake. The second will not fit a mast with a sleeve and gives less room for raking. Unfortunately, a mast with a sleeve will not fit into the low-friction deck collar, and a mast without a sleeve has too much play when used on a regular deck collar, which leads to a jerky movement of the main when tacking or jibing and will ultimately damage the boat.

If you have a mast with a sleeve and a boat with a low-friction deck collar, you will need to remove the sleeve. If you do it carefully, you can reuse your sleeve. However, most of the time, you will need to get a new one. Swapping out the deck collar is NOT recommended; you are likely to get charged by the charter company. You are better off asking ahead of time to make sure the boat fits a mast with a collar.

Maintaining the Sprit Halyard tension.

All charter spars come with a sprit halyard aystem which includes a hook-in block, a halyard line and fly with a block or with a ring, and a control line that goes into the cleat. Many of the new halyard line setups use a frictionless ring vs. a block. That’s usually fine. What is most important is the control line that goes into the cleat. Many lines slip at the cleat, especially in high winds. It may be because the cleat is old or because the line is too hard. To avoid issues, we bring two identical Halyard Systems with us. One for use and a second one for backup in case the first one fails. We also carry a set of metal files to file the cleat if necessary.

Finally, a note about the age and brand of your spars.

Opti gear is always changing. Chartered gear is always the latest generation and will therefore differ from your gear if it is 4+ years old. For example, OptiMax masts went through changes about 10 years ago. The bottom cleat that holds the sprit halyard control line was moved down 1.5 ft to make it easier for a sailor to tighten the sprit by putting their weight on it rather than pulling. Your sprit halyard setup needs a longer control line to fit the new masts. So, the older your gear is, the more likely chartered gear will differ. Nothing wrong with that, as long as you are prepared.

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