For anyone interested.

I've been thinking for quite some time about a different path to make mainsail sheeting easier.

I've noticed that holding the sheet saps strength for when you want to sheet in. Basically, we are all strong enough to sheet the sail if we can fully relax afterwards. This means the line needs to be held in place by some system like a cleat or ratchet system that takes more of the line load then it currently does.

I'm not at all satisfied with the ratchet holding power on todays mainsheetsystems. The less then 90 degree wrap around the ratchetted sheeve does help here. I already use a tapered mainsheet and that was a large improvement in itself.

So two approaches are

-1- Make a full wrap around the standard ratchet with the sheet going to a small block on the boom just in front of the mainsheet system and then along the boom to a midboom sheeting point. The full wrap will at least improve the holding power by a factor of 2; which is alot

-2- Have the top block of the mainsheet include an auto ratchet (with also an auto ratched in the lower block). This way the mainsheet setup reflects the spi double ratchet setup and the holding power will be quite large but still have the sheet run very smoothly at lower line tensions (sheeting out).

Wouter