This is your boat's actual rigging plan, not a reconstruction — every route below came from you, and the guesswork is gone. Laid out end to end it also reveals a pattern that makes the whole layout easy to hold in your head.
Halyard, 1st tack line, 2nd tack line. All three attach along the luff and all three run down the mast. Port is the up and down side.
1st reef, 2nd reef, choker, topping lift — and the mainsheet, which comes round the starboard quarter to a cleat on that side too. Port pulls the front of the sail; starboard pulls the back of it and the spar.
Tack line to port, reef line to starboard. You cannot reef from one bank, which is exactly why the sequence matters more on this boat than on a sloop.
Read the seven clutches straight across and the four reefing lines are the middle four, straddling the companionway. The everyday three on the cabin top — halyard, choker, topping lift — are at the outer edges, nearest the rails.
Everything is shown at once below. Open a line and it lights up on both drawings — the spars on the left, the deck on the right — while the rest fade back, and the steps walk it block by block from the sail to the clutch. The clutch it lands in is on every heading.
N36 marks a detail documented on another boat in the range — the layout is the same, but it has not been confirmed on a 30U. Everything unmarked is from your own rigging plan or the 30U manual.
Laid out in physical order, the way you see them sitting on the cabin top from the companionway. Print this page and the card is all that comes out.
Across the cabin top, port rail to starboard rail: halyard · 1st tack · 2nd tack — companionway — 1st reef · 2nd reef · choker · topping lift. The three you use on every sail sit at the two outside edges, where your hands fall naturally from the helm. The four you only want when it is blowing are grouped together in the middle. So the everyday boat is worked from the outsides in, and reefing is the one job that sends you to the middle.
Port numbering runs from the rail inward; starboard numbering runs from the centreline outward. That is how you described them, and it is worth noting because it means the two banks count in opposite directions — the low numbers are at the outside on port and at the inside on starboard.
The manual gives six steps; owners on the association group add the topping lift and get nine. Both are below with clutch addresses attached, so you can rehearse either one tied to the dock. Learn the owners’ version — it is the one that lets you reef by hand.
Starboard, port, port, port, starboard, starboard. The reef is a move to port and back — you release the shape on starboard, do all the hoisting work on port, then come back to starboard to set the shape again. If you find yourself reaching across mid-sequence, you are probably out of order.
Starboard clutch 3 opens the sequence and closes it. Nothing else can move while the foot of the sail is stretched flat. And when you are done sailing, ease it completely: leaving choker tension on at rest stretches the bottom of the sail permanently, and once stretched it will never take up a proper shape again.
Two things, neither urgent, both worth a look next time you are aboard.
It comes back to starboard clutch 4, so you can work it from the cockpit. Not every Nonsuch can: an owner on the community forum described the topping lift as the one intimidating control on an otherwise easy boat, because the outboard end of the wishbone is only reachable upwind or luffing, and reaching it means standing somewhere you would rather not. The whole owners’ reefing method depends on adjusting the topping lift twice mid-sequence. On your boat that is two clutch pulls.
These are the two the manual draws vaguely, and the two owners spend the most time modifying. Here is what the association group and the rigging threads actually describe, and what to look for on yours.
It is a snotter — the same device a spritsail uses, under a different name. Two stages:
Upstairs, a loop. Dead-ended at a padeye on one side of the mast, forward around a turning block shackled to the front of the wishbone, and back to a cheek block on the mast at about wishbone height. Because it wraps the front of the spar, hauling it drags the wishbone aft instead of pulling it down. Two parts bear on the spar.
Downstairs, a tackle. From that cheek block the line runs down a multi-part tackle along the mast — roughly three-to-one, so about six-to-one all in — and the fall goes to block C, fairlead 3, clutch 3.
Measured on a Nonsuch 30: about 630 lb at 16 knots, and roughly 1,600 lb at 25 knots — and 25 knots is well past where you should already have reefed. That is why the purchase exists, and why this system wears.
Where it fails. The mast cheek block. On one 30 the sheave edges broke up and chewed the line; on port tack the control line chafes against the mast. The standard upgrade replaces that cheek block with a hinged half-moon block stood off the mast so it can pivot inboard and outboard — which also lets you adjust the choker under load on a broad reach.
Later Nonsuch masts carry the choker tackle, the halyard deflection block and the reef blocks on stainless and aluminium bands clamped around the spar rather than on fittings bolted through it — deliberately, to avoid drilling holes that concentrate stress and start fatigue cracks in an unstayed mast. Worth knowing which generation yours is, and worth not adding any drilled fittings of your own.
What left the factory was close to nothing: a pennant, a turning block — originally a cheek block on the aft starboard outer side of the wishbone — and a cleat on the spar just forward of it. The 26 manual specifies 31 feet of quarter-inch and no blocks at all. Owners set it in spring and left it until autumn. For a boat where the topping lift is the light-air secret, that is a real limitation.
What almost everyone has now is a purchase at the aft end of the spar and the fall led to the cockpit. Two fiddle blocks give four-to-one: one with becket and shackle on the end of the standing part, one with a shackle at the spar end. Plenty of 30 owners argue that is not enough — the spar and sail are heavy and there is a lot of latent friction — and go to five or six to one.
Fiddle blocks, not side-by-side doubles. Sheaves stacked one above the other keep the parts from wrapping around each other. This is the single most repeated piece of advice in those threads, and twisting is the single most repeated complaint. Garhauer 30- or 40-series are the usual choice for a 30; some prefer a 25-series triple with a double-and-becket for six-to-one on looks and line size.
Line. The 30 Ultra manual lists the pennant at about 70 feet of 3/8-inch. Owners find 3/8 right for a 30 — thinner runs with less resistance through blocks and line guides than the heavier sizes, while quarter-inch suits a 26.
A block installed upside down, which produces both twisting and a lot of friction. A swivel in the tackle, which one owner cured by removing it. Or the bitter end being made off to the becket on the block — moving it to the spar tube instead makes a triangle of the parts and stops them wrapping. Also check the grub screw in the fiddle block is tight.
A wire preventer — a safety line between the topping lift tackle and the wishbone so the spar cannot drop if the tackle lets go. One boat was found without one during a rigging survey. And if yours still has the original cleat at the outer end, owners recommend removing it: it has been known to catch other boats’ rigging alongside, with serious consequences.
Everything on this sheet that did not come from you came from one of these. The first one is the highest-value document I found and I could not read it — you can.
Members → Maintenance → “Spars and Rigging Technical Info”, fourth blue bar down; scroll within that sub-collection.
It covers, by name: Backup Mainsheet Systems, Hanger Line Pad Eyes, Choker Safety Lines, Wishbone Weldments, Extra Snatch Blocks, Extra Halyard Sheave and Halyard, Companionway Drop Boards, Life Raft Stowage, Safety Lines, Storm Sails, Emergency Steering and Roll Bars.
Four of those are systems already on this sheet, and it is a factory engineer writing about failure modes rather than owners comparing notes. If you read one thing, read this.
Members → Manuals — the full 30U owner’s manual. Your page 45.2 came from it; the rest will settle the two items still open below.
Advice for Potential Buyers — worth a read before you sign, not after.
The INA Google Group went read-only on 31 December 2025 and has been replaced by the Nonsuch Community Forum at nonsuch.discourse.group. The archive is still readable and is where most of the detail below sits — but post new questions on the Discourse forum.