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Old 08-12-2005, 07:30 AM
Brion Toss Brion Toss is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2005
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Default Leverage

Hello,
Sheet location plays off the boom as leverage with block and tackles as leverage; at the end of the boom you maximize boom leverage, so you need less block leverage, and at midboom it's the opposite. But further forward than midboom, no amount of block (or winch) leverage is going to compensate for the near-absence of boom leverage, even if you could keep the bails from ripping out and the gooseneck from failing.
What you are dealing with, then, is not how to move the sheet forward of the dodger, but how to come up with some other way of escaping from the awful setup that came with the boat. A bridge deck traveler might fit aft of the dodger, but would probably present uncacceptable acrobatic challenges for crew movement fore and aft. So how about building your mainsheet traveler into an appropriately reinforced boom gallows? This would get the sheet off the deck, give you a functional traveler, and retain leverage. It would require good engineering, of course.
Fair leads,
Brion Toss
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