boom travelor placement conundrum
Hey Craig, envy your sail this Sunday, yes, I do.
Everytime I alter something it generates a domino effect.
Don't recall anyubody here objecting to a midboom sheeting arrangement. Caution comes from me from what I've read. Do believe it would mean a stiffer boom to take the three bails and blocks. Not there yet!
As finding a place for a travelor becomes more serious, the over the c'way becomes more an alternative again. Another addition to 338 will be a hard dodger. But at the moment it's figuring out if a hard permanent windscreen with tube and fabric pram hood behind it is feasible. The top of the screen would be above the forward end of the opening and the hood would be folded forward to the windscreen allowing good access below. My lean is toward a well rounded dodger, front and top, that won't include a wide travelor as part of it, as I have seen. It would be great to get two for the price of one if they could be structurally combined. But it's not going to happen. I've witnessed that a cockpit wide travelor is necessary for effective boom placement and depowering.
So if this travelor is somewhere over the bridge deck - because the further back on the boom the block are the less force needed to sheet - it would be separate from the hood and would be designed to be high enough to get below without contortion. It could be above the dodger when the dodger was depolyed and designed in such a way as to be grabbable for going on deck and getting into the cockpit. If boats can go around without any rear ends and have their travelor in a slot under the cockpit deck than why not go contrare somewhere above the companionway. Hunters do it in the stern. Maybe a taller arch over the bridge deck is possible with something near cocpit width???? OH boy.... what a pickle.
[In the middle of the night I 'saw' the travelor arch looking like a boom gallows with tube legs coming up from outside the coamings at the end of the dodger. Now, more awake, this arch thing is easy to move back and forth ...in the mind. And there it is over the back end of the cockpit again!!!]
Think that the tails of the travelor sheets would be better away from the tiller and the OB - better up front with the halyards reefers cunningham and vang ends, and down hauls. Anybody with me on this visualization?
Thanks for the test! I guess I got myself into this, again. "It is all in how you go from one mistake to the next." Let's hope awl ebb goes sortof gracefully and with more speed toward the better compromise.
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