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A week or so ago, I was sailing at Datchet in a breeze at the top end of the A rig when the jib tie down line broke. This was 80lb breaking strain fishing line and had not failed on me before. A week later the same thing happened to a new tie down line. My training jib is carrying a few creases as a result but still in good shape.
Obviously something was up. Here is the setup albeit modified.
What I assumed happened was that in the chop under high load, the tie down line was sawing against the slot and to be honest I had not smoothed the edge. The picture shows the modified smoothed slot so the fraying should not happen again. In addition I upgraded the tie down line to BG's 125 braided line. I now appreciate the quality of the line BG Sails and Design has chosen. Fishing line is great but there are high load areas where perhaps it should not be used.
Spiral sheeting issues
The other niggling issue was the spiral sheeting winch unwrapping itself. Oddly enough it happened on the same days the jib tie down gave way. My sheeting system does not use pulley blocks but instead PTFE tubes. Now PTFE is one of the slipperiest substances known to man. Unfortunately the cord that I put through it is not.
The tubes are great for guiding the endless sheet line from the deck bulkhead to the winch but not when you turn the line 180 degrees over half an inch. There was so much friction in the system that you could see the winch plate moving up and down. Having said that, the set up had worked fine up to last week. The picture below shows the aft sheeting fitting.
In concept, this is a brilliant design if the cord had the same propertiies as PTFE but the resultant friction caused drag on the retainer line so when sheeting out, there was slackness in the sheet-in line causing the sheet to drop off the spiral winch. Now the same fitting with a pulley inside would be the perfect solution
My solution is to replace the PTFE fitting with a free standing pulley. Not very elegant but is a good temporary fix. The proper solution is a screw down block but I cannot remove the current fitting and want to keep the sheet lines centered at the back of the boat to keep the sheet lines away from the water
Amazingly, in the absence of a pulley and as a temporary solution, I put the sheet system round the backstay fitting and hey presto, the friction was largely removed. I will have a pulley block there from Sunday.
The picture below shows the tube entry and exit into the boat. There is no friction in the tube in this area. and the loose end on the left by the spiral winch provides a great feeder to the spiral winch groves.
Juan Egea positioned the winch perfectly in his Alioth design so that it is easy to get at and maintain. The lines on the deck on the right are the markers for the extremety of the winch line. The arrow is the latest.
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