Two years of trouble with mainsheet - SOLVED

Ever since I bought my Ericson 29 almost 2 years ago, I've had trouble with the mainsheet. I've consistently had trouble getting the mainsheet into the cam cleat, and also releasing the sheet from the cam cleat, which felt very dangerous in high winds.



I thought the problem was the angle of the fiddle block. I tried raising the fiddle block, which made little difference.

On Sunday, I got very frustrated again, so I removed the blocks to take them to the local rigger to see if they could help with any sort of solution. I was seriously thinking of adding a mainsheet winch, almost solely to take care of this problem.

But on my way out the door, I grabbed a spare line to demonstrate the problem to the rigger, and the other line went in and out of the cam like butter. The problem vanished.

As it turned out, the source of two years of problems was the previous owner had replaced the mainsheet line with a slightly undersized line (7/16" vs. 1/2").

Problem solved. Lesson learned.

Which is why P. O. has two distinct interpetstions.

Mine came rigged with mainsheet winches (end-boom sheeting) and it's a real pain to switch sides when single-handing. Plus the winches seem like huge over-kill for the application. I'd stay with the cleat set-up.

But maybe I'll learn to love it in time. (I have been tempted to "borrow" the mainsheet setup from my hobie cat (much heavier-duty hardware) for a weekend, but in practice it probably wouldn't fit.)