It is a journey to remember already. I felt a driving need to visit mom on the island. Rene had the whole weekend off work we packed up the boat again. The parts I ordered after the last trip almost arrived before we headed off. (All comfort) The real changes from the opening trip last week were done right away. I have a 3 priority system that classified items on my to do list l under safety, nice to have and comfort or a 1_2-3 priority. Our alethiomiter strapped to the helm where I actually really like it. The top has been stripped off. This is a bare bones model. Some upgrades but many are struggling with their age. Like me…
My life has literally been saved with this boat. It has given me purpose and desire. I have sucked and drained youtube for all the sailing tidbits I can find. I look and draw and plan what could be. I’m envisioning an aluminum backend that will have a traveler just under the lowest level of the boom lift. This traveler can be friction fitted so that the traveller will need some force to go over preventing the large accidental gybes that can put huge amounts of straining on the already tired equipment. Then I might as well make a davit up for my dinghy, while I’m at it make some solar shelves. The aft cockpit really was getting complicated. Then the battery system was also tired. It is actually cheaper now to switch to lithium now vs agm batteries. Including all the upgrades needed. One was still needed to get a new one on this trip just to make it home. One had lost a call or two. So picked a new one up in parksville just for this trip as I’m going to switch.
The waves are pretty big as we sway in our anchorage in Turnstile Bay on Bowen. We left deep bay yesterday and motor sailed most of the day upwind. Calling it a night on a ball with the boys on motorboat stepping on our toes. We were up early for light wind in the morning and we were off early but the winds picked up fast. We were trying to make Vancouver into a headwind that was predicted to be 10 knots but it was actually 25+. I already had one reef up and was considering a 2nd when I asked myself why? What the rush? We turned a quick left into a little protected bay on the back of Bowen and now we wait! Bouncing and rolling on the two heavy lines attached to a mooring ball. I’m thinking about dropping the anchor but the chain looks solid. 50+ predicted. Everything is tied down. I don’t want the lines to get tangled. We are on a swivel as we twist and dance with the winds’ clumsy twirls and waves left feet we don’t need an anchor to get involved in this dance. So I sit and write as Rene sleeps off her early morning gravol. I’m gonna sit up top and take a few pictures.
Looking forward to the pictures, Rahsaan. Ditto some of the designs you’re thinking about.
As you’re designing these things, you might also want to think about throwing in a “crash bar”. There’s a design for one on the website, I think. The idea of these is to position an arch where it will both (a) block the boom from coming down on the helmsperson if the topping lift fails; and, (b) keep a flailing mainsheet back where it won’t tangle with a person during a gybe.
RE travellers, though:
I’m not sure how this would work. The big danger from an accidental gybe with a Nonsuch is when the sail is well out. As the boom swings across, the mainsheet goes slack, so there’s not really anything you can put friction on.
What a lot of people do to reduce stress on the hardware from a gybe is to put a rubber dockline/anchor snubber on the mainsheet just above where it attaches to the deck. That puts a bit of give in the line when it’s gone over and is hardening up on the other side.
That’s what I’ve got on my boat. I think. The dealer called it a “roll bar” when I bought the boat so that’s what I’ve been calling it. It looks like this. (Red arrow.) It is made of 1.25" stainless steel. It is not only good for keeping the sheet out of the cockpit during long tacks or jibes and saving you from a headache if the boom should somehow drop, but it also provides a great grab bar for aping around the aft end of the cockpit. (Like when you need to stand up to attach or detach that steadying line when lowering or raising sail.)
I don’t have a photo, but here’s a snip out of an old video showing the snubbers that Bob was talking about. I think others have done this with the bone-shaped dock line snubbers, too.
I would caution you about one thing, though. If your sheet is getting old and sunburned, the snubbers will chafe it badly. That happened to me. If you peeled the line in this video back (while slack, of course) from the snubbers you would see severe chafing. I replaced the sheet last year along with the rest of my running rigging. When I put the snubbers on the new sheet I put some of that fancy anti-chafe sleeving over this part of the line. It’s made of Dyneema and is expensive, but you only need two or three feet of it, so the actual cost isn’t that much and it will protect your much more expensive sheet. You could probably do the same thing by stripping the cover off of some regular poly line, but you’d have to replace it more often, which seemed like a hassle to me.
