you need the hobble so you can take the jib sheet off the winch and load the kite sheet onto it.

on the X40 we have a self tacker and a clutch so you still need to unload the winch exactly as the AC45's do, but we can still control the jib sheet via the clutch, so if in a bear away it all goes a bit wrong its still possible to ease.

The AC45's can have multiple clips on the hobble so you can have a short or long hobble setup pretty easy, but it takes a day like that to prompt such thoughts i guess..