4) When sheeting the spi, Wouter you mentioned you sometimes let go of the crossbar or tiller to do that so you can sheet with both hands. With a mainsheet I'm accostomed to using the mainsheet cleat so I can keep sheeting in with one hand but even to do that (when I need to pull in lots of sheet) I need to hand off the slack in the cleated line to my tiller hand so I can grab the next armful of line. Under spi, even if you use a ratchet block, I don't think you can do that. Does anyone use cleats on their spi sheets? If not, other than letting go of the crossbar/tiller, how do you sheet in lots of spi sheet using only one hand?
Use the fingers on your tiller hand to clamp the sheet against the tiller while you take another armfull. If your ratchet blocks aren't up to the job, put another set of blocks on the back of the front beam, and the run the sheet through them as well. Even if the front blocks aren't ratchet blocks, you've now got the sheet wrapped around about 1/3 of the ratchet block, which massively improves their grip. With a decent ratchet setup, you'd be surprised at the how little force is needed to hold a sheet with a significant load on it. If you want to be really sure, put ratchet blocks on the front beam too.
Paul
