Hi,
I'm learning to trim my new boat and I'm having troubles with the jib. The 4 way system is missing but I'm not very interested in having a wire on the tramp, so I used a line instead. Eventhough the line streches, I believe the end result is not too different in terms of geometry. I played with traveller and also moving the block in and out and concluded the following:
- The ability to point high is pretty bad if you keep the block always out (or attached directly to the traveller)
- I felt that the traveller should be more forward than what the track allowed. This is because the jib leech was always a bit loose and opened up in the upper part, as opposed to the foot that was straight and firm. A simple test shows the same fact I think: I took the block out to find the good position by hand. I chose a fixed position side to side (above the foot strap) and moved forward and aft, to find the point where leech and foot were tensioned equally. That point was about 15 or 20 cm or so forward of the jib track. The sails are not the originals of the boat, so it's no such a weird idea that there is something wrong with the sail cut. (Though I'm very open to hear that there's soemthing wrong on the "end user" side..). Then I made a change to my jib system to test my theory and it seemed to work better: I passed the line from one traveller to a fairlead in the center of the front beam and to the other traveller. It seemed better but now I was limited in range because of the line stretching (line goes up and leaves no room to tension the jib sheet). But there are possibilities to fine tune that, and it seemed close enough.

What do you think? should I be looking at something completely different to solve this problem?

Here is a picture showing the jib leech open (click for bigger image):