Finally a view of the jib sheet traveller. The original design showed fixed “bull’s eyes” for sheet leads. I wanted something with some adjustability built in. The cost of bronze track and sheet cars was a bit steep but I did have a brass “dinghy gooseneck” originally bought for the mizzen mast that I wasn’t going to use. After some imagining and fiddling with some shackles and blocks, I came up with this arrangement. So far it has held up to some pretty good winds.
For Alistego we decided to not use winches for sheeting the jib. Our reasoning for this was simple. We had previously owned a boat with the same sized jib and had no trouble whatsoever handling it without a winch. Besides, we have no interest in racing, so how hard is it to head up into the wind, pull in the sheet and then bear off a bit?
The title photo above shows the deck hardware at the cockpit end of the system. It’s very simple, the sheet comes from the bow to a cheek block on the deck and through the cockpit coaming thanks to the neat little bronze fitting shown. All parts came from Classic Marine in the UK.
