| Author | Message | ||
     Jeff Roy New member Username: Jeffr Post Number: 60 Registered: 03-2001 Rating: N/A |
I replaced my mainsheet system this spring and rebuilt my traveler. I am really happy with the way it is working so I wanted to share my design with the class. My goals for the project were to make the system easy to use for both day sailing shorthanded and racing with crew. I really dislike mainsheets that cleated on the traveller car because as the car moves the sheeting angle changes making it either difficult to cleat or release depending on the position of the car. Also, when the sheet is on hard, pulling on it more just makes the car move unless there is a foot jammed up against it. I also wanted to increase the purchase to 6:1 ( I think 5:1 was standard) for normal use and 12:1 for racing. At the same time I wanted to improve the performance of my traveller. The traveller needed to be taken off the boat and taken apart. The car was all gummed up with dirt as were the balls. Everything was thoroughly cleaned and put back together. I made a spacer out of Starboard to go underneath the traveller because I found it often ran over lines and got jammed on them. With the spacer there is enough room to run over lines cleanly. I replaced the Schaefer stand up blocks and cam cleats with new Harken ones. My traveller had a 4:1 but it seemed jury riggged, not sure if it was standard. I kept the advantage at 4:1 so I installed a pair of padeyes next to the new double stand up blocks. I purchased a large swivel base bracket from Layline to mount a Harken swivel base with Fredricksen ratchet block on. This assembly was through bolted, sandwitched between the support brackets and the new spacer under the traveller. A few notes on this. I originally ordered the standard bracket form Layline but it was to short and created interference with the traveller car. I bought a small swivel base and now wish I had bought the longer one because the ratchet block hits the cam cleat fairlead. This has worked out great. I can adjust the main and cleat it without looking from any position, regardless of the position of the traveller or the wind strength. This picture shows the primary mainsheet ratchet and swivel.  I used Harken carbos everywhere except on the swivel. I put a 57 mm double on the car, a 57 mm double on the boom padeye and a 57 mm ti-lite on the boom, just forward of the double for the final turn to the fine tune system (more on that later). This picture shows the overall set up.  For the fine tune I put a 40mm single on the end of the mainsheet with a stopper ball to prevent it from getting jammed into the 57 mm ti-lite. I led this down to a pair of 40 mm singles on a big padeye on the cockpit sole. I put a good sized backing plate under this to spread the load. From there it goes to standups on the footwell wall and up to cam cleats at the top of the footwell. This doubles the purchase to 12:1 and allows the main trimmer to trim from either rail. I tied the ends of the fine tune off on the toe rail so they cannot run out and are always easy to find when sitting outboard  This picture shows the entire system. Notice the spacer under the traveller and the way the fine tune is routed. The fine tune does not interfere with the engine controls. The only drawback to this setup is that because 2 of the 6 legs of the mainsheet purchase are fixed on the centerline it reduces the effectiveness of the traveller by 1/3. This has not been a problem, it just takes a little getting used to. We have used vang sheeting when we found we needed to play the traveller aggresively. |
