Papoose Changes
as of June 2011
Several changes to Papoose over the last couple of years to help in our racing efforts. I thought I would share them.
First up is the foot rest installed to keep me from falling when I sit on the coaming to steer. These are made of PVC pipe reinforced with oak dowels inside the uprights.
The main winch bases started pulling up again. This time I replaced them with a new design that is wider and through bolted to thick backing plates that go from frame to frame. The aft winches were Barient 28s with a power ratio of 35 and have been replaced with Barient 22s with power ratios of 40. They were also moved forward about 18 inches so that the aft jib trimmer and the mainsheet trimmer are not trying to be in the same space. There were other issues with the jib winch handle hitting the mainsheet that are solved by this relocation as well. It is amazing to me both that my Barient 28s had such poor ratios and that the Barient 22s I eneded up have such powerful ratios. Both are different than what is listed in the Barient catalog I have online.
The winch bases are laminated from 1 inch mahogany in the case of the forward and teak in the case of the aft bases. I did the aft ones first before finding out that mahogany is a superior wood for winch bases because it is a more stable wood although teak is fairly stable as well.
The mainsheet system is 5:1 and is dual ended. The arrangement with the spectra loops from REI that hold the blocks in just the right geometry allow the sheet to go forward along the bottom of the boom where a block on the vang padeye takes it to another block on the cabin top. From there to a cabin top mounted Barient 18.
The aft end of the mainsheet goes through an auto hex-ratchet that is hard mounted to a teak block with a cam cleat on its end. This arrangement works well and is probably the 10th arrangement we have tried. We are satisfied at this point so no more development on the mainsheet. The dual ended mainsheet allows two trimmers for faster pulling in of the sheet.
The other thing you can see in this picture is that I moved the control blocks off the traveler and onto their own bases. This gave the traveler more travel but to tell the truth, it doesn't make that much difference because there still isn't enough control with just the traveler to work the main in the puffs.
And finally you can see that the cam cleats for the traveler are horizontal. This works much better than the other arrangements that we tried and there were many. You can also see that the traveler control line is a continuous loop. This cleaned up the cockpit so much that I recommend it highly.
NOTICE: Some pages have affiliate links to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Please read website Cookie, Privacy, and Disclamers by clicking HERE. To contact me click HERE. For my YouTube page click HERE