For Tornados it has been common practice for many years for the crew to handle the mainsheet. Actually, Rick White is the one who started that trend. Until recently, the Tornado was a single-trapeze boat, and it was the crew that trapezed.

Well, back in the early 1970's, everyone was still doing it the traditional way, with the helmsman handling the mainsheet. Rick is and was a big guy, 6'1" and weighing over 200 lbs. He was on the helm at the Tornado Worlds in Toronto in the early '70's and he had his young son Todd as crew. Todd weighed about 80 or 90 pounds, so when he went out on the trapeze, it had no effect whatsoever. Rick thought, "This is ridiculous." So he put Todd on the helm and he went on the trapeze and handled the mainsheet. After that they got a couple of second places in the 80-boat fleet. (Unfortunately, they had to drop out because it was very cold up there and Todd was starting to get hypothermia.)

Anyway, another big guy at that event, about 6'2", sailing a Tornado was sailmaker Rick Taylor. He also had a young, lightweight kid as crew, so he decided to do the same thing Rick White had done. He put his lightweight crew on the helm and handled the mainsheet himself. That lightweight crew he put on the helm was Randy Smyth.

The Tornado was always a perfect boat to have a woman or a lightweight man on the helm and a strong, hefty guy on the trapeze.

Obviously, the person on the trapeze has a lot more leverage for pulling in the mainsheet than a person sitting on the boat, because you can use your legs as well as your arms to sheet in the main. So it was a natural for the crew to handle the main.

I don't know what the Tornados are doing now that they have gone to double trapeze and spinnaker, but I think most of them are still having the crew handle the mainsheet. As I said, these Tornado teams are very tight and highly skilled, so this configuration works well for them.

It's great when you can train a crew to handle the main on the weather leg of a race course or in a distance race. But for normal racers it seems to me that on most modern beach cats the crew has plenty to do on the boat already without having to handle the mainsheet. Does the crew play the downhaul AND the mainsheet?

And we haven't even mentioned the jobs for the crew downwind, handling a spinnaker and maybe also a jib with its sheet and barberhauler, and having to make sure the boards are set at the right up-down position and taking care of the mast rotation and the downhaul. And probably being responsible for easing/tightening the outhaul. And not to mention the precarious places they are required to place their bodies to optimize boat performance.

I think crews need a union.