This past season was my wife and I’s first summer with Rhumb Ration our 35-3 that we just bought. One of the things that has been driving us nuts is the rigging and deck hardware arrangement from the previous owner. Problem one was he had oversized all the halyards to 1/2” which didn’t work in the masthead sheves or the original shafer clutches. We are solving that by installing new vectran 3/8 halyards and I will be putting new (most likely Lewmar) clutches in, as the bushings in the shafers all crumbled from age this summer.
But the other oddity is we have two large barient self-tailing winches on starboard and a small aluminum lewmar winch to port. At first it looks simple. Genoa and main halyard are on the stbd outboard barient, inner starboard handles the mainsheet most of the time with the clew outhaul, boom bang, and first reef also led to it. Port side the lewmar handles the spinnaker halyard and second reef. The issue is twofold. First with our dodger up, you can’t swing the outboard winch handle, and the small lewmar on port is too small to shift halyards to it. Second the opening under our traveler on the stbd inboard side seems small to get more than three lines through.
I’m thinking of removing the Barient from outboard stbd and placing it where the lewmar is. Then moving the main halyard to the port side of the mast. So the stbd winch would be used for the genoa halyard, main sheet and one reef, the port side would have the main halyard, spinnaker halyard, second reef and boom vang. This also requires new deck organizers, probably a stacked 2-2 on stbd and 3-2 on port giving me one free spot on each organizer for expansion/ issues.
What are peoples thoughts? The current arrangement would work if we could swing the handle. Going back and forth on the 2 speed doesn’t work well for the last 20% of rasing the main as the load gets too large for the first speed. I don’t want to rely on a power winch handle either. Have others had similar issues? I saw another post by a 35-3 owner doing similar things, but all his rigging seemed to be starting from different places than ours. As new large boat owners we are wondering if we are just missing something? Does anyone know the purpose of the port cleat by the lewmar winch?
But the other oddity is we have two large barient self-tailing winches on starboard and a small aluminum lewmar winch to port. At first it looks simple. Genoa and main halyard are on the stbd outboard barient, inner starboard handles the mainsheet most of the time with the clew outhaul, boom bang, and first reef also led to it. Port side the lewmar handles the spinnaker halyard and second reef. The issue is twofold. First with our dodger up, you can’t swing the outboard winch handle, and the small lewmar on port is too small to shift halyards to it. Second the opening under our traveler on the stbd inboard side seems small to get more than three lines through.
I’m thinking of removing the Barient from outboard stbd and placing it where the lewmar is. Then moving the main halyard to the port side of the mast. So the stbd winch would be used for the genoa halyard, main sheet and one reef, the port side would have the main halyard, spinnaker halyard, second reef and boom vang. This also requires new deck organizers, probably a stacked 2-2 on stbd and 3-2 on port giving me one free spot on each organizer for expansion/ issues.
What are peoples thoughts? The current arrangement would work if we could swing the handle. Going back and forth on the 2 speed doesn’t work well for the last 20% of rasing the main as the load gets too large for the first speed. I don’t want to rely on a power winch handle either. Have others had similar issues? I saw another post by a 35-3 owner doing similar things, but all his rigging seemed to be starting from different places than ours. As new large boat owners we are wondering if we are just missing something? Does anyone know the purpose of the port cleat by the lewmar winch?