The main traveler is one of those love-hate pieces of gear on a boat. We love that it separates control of twist and angle of attack into a quick and instinctive process. We hate it when it clutters up a cockpit and fear it when it slashes across the deck during a breezy weather jibe. A traditional alternative is a split- or twin-mainsheet system. We thought this setup had become extinct, but in fact we’re seeing it on a few of today’s high-performance multihulls, which suggests it still has merit. Every user we interviewed loved it. And so some testing was in order.
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My F-9AXR trimaran was built with a twin sheet system, designed by Mike Leneman, who also supplied the wing mast & forestay. The boom is extended (approximately 18”) so that the sheets attach from the end of the boom down to the coaming near the aft end of the cockpit. It is a 12:1 continuous line with a shive on the boom joining both sides. We race more than cruise.
Observations after 7 years; we love the openness of the cockpit & only miss the traveller a little when racing upwind. When reaching, we just crack off a little & go. When running downwind with an assym spin, the main seems to work well cracked off a little more than a reach, but surprisingly much less than 45 degrees. We use the mainsail leach telltales to help us dial in trim.
Bottom Line; From my experience, the added complexity, weight & expense does not outweigh what would appear to be the small potential gains of a traveller system.
My wife and I have been living for 11 years aboard a 1997 Catana 44 with a twin sheet main. On our first crossing from Ft Lauderdale to Bimini in 2010 we noticed the single-point attachment of the mainsheet dead end and turning block was flexing the coaming under load. We pulled the deck rings from the coaming and used a hole saw to remove the fiberglass skin and discovered the coaming balsa core was saturated. We dug out all the wet core and filled the space out to about 2X the diameter of the deck ring bases with glass mat and epoxy, and enlarged the backing plates. We also added a second hard point for each sheet so that each dead end tied off on the original ring and the turning blocks on new ones, set three feet wider than the originals, these hard points also set on the coaming after replacing the balsa core as on the originals. This change effectively halved the load on the coaming rings, and substantially improved our ability to tweak the main with the wider spread of the mainsheet dead ends and turning blocks.
I’m surprised to read your technique for jibing with a traveler, and the comment about the traveler potentially “zipping across the cockpit”. I prefer to keep the traveler centered when sailing downwind.
I know that you Americans have your own brand of my language, but the verb ‘to better control’ can’t be found in any dictionary, yours or mine.
Your headline should read ‘Do twin sheets control the mainsheet better’.
PLEASE !
I have been using the traveler system for most of my life, 40+ years, and I just bought a catamaran with a Delta mainsheet system (Twin mainsheets). To me, the biggest factor is control of the leach and boom. My experience has been that I can get to a trim faster with the Traveler system but with a little more patients and fiddling around I can get to the same trim with the Delta.
The other point that I think is important to consider when choosing mainsheet systems is preventing accidental jibes. I think most readers know that one can use a preventer with the Traveler to avoid accidental jibes and this works well but it is still uncomfortable to say the least when it happens. The Delta system has a built in preventer out to a certain angle. If the boom is out past the leeward sheet deck attachment in the Delta system, you can still have problems though not as big as with the Traveler system.
To me, many of the other points addressed are about configuration and comfort. In my case, I still like the Traveler mainsheet over the Delta mainsheet because I am more oriented towards performance so I may convert my catamaran to a Traveler setup in the future. I’d be interested in experiences in converting from a Delta or Twin setup to a Traveler.
Thank you for the read.
Maybe I missed it, but one issue you don’t address is ease of access (or lack thereof) to both main sheet & traveler when you’re at the helm or tiller, i.e. right at the stern of the boat. This wasn’t a problem with my J24 as both traveler and main sheet are right at the helm/tiller, and so control of the main is extremely easy & convenient, and safe. But surely if the main is controlled from a traveler on the cabintop, this means that on most boats you have to leave the tiller or wheel and go forward to adjust the mainsheet and/or traveler?
If sailing single-handed, especially when entering/leaving port or a river or anchorage, having to leave the helm to go forward to the cabintop to adjust the mainsheet and/or traveler is surely a big inconvenience, maybe even dangerous? I would have thought that in this situation, a twin mainsheet leading to each quarter near the tiller or wheel where the helmsman can easily adjust the Main – would be invaluable – and far safer/more practical than trying to adjust the mainsheet and/or traveler on a cabintop.
So in short handed situations, especially in confined waters where maybe quite a bit of tacking/jibing is required, or spilling wind from the mainsail – surely this is where twin sheets led aft would really shine?
Hi. Good article. I’d like to describe what I have on my boat. It won’t be for everyone, because my trimaran is a center cockpit, ala Jim Brown, so I don’t have the problem of the lines draping over the cockpit when sheets are eased. My points of attachment are approx 7 ft apart. Boom height about 5 ft. I originally had a single line system with 3 blocks on the end of the boom, but that always sought its own level, like water, and would not stay where I wanted it. After looking at a Cantana at Raiatea with the twin, and separate, set up, I cut the sheet in two and run it through a fiddle on top and fiddle with becket on bottom, both sides. 3:1 purchase, I believe. The sheets come to a deck organizer on center, then through a double rope clutch and to a single, small, 2 speed winch, all of which, I can reach easily from the wheel. When gybing, I put one wrap of each sheet on the winch, clutches closed, and haul together. When the leeward one reaches vertical, and stops, I take the slack out of the windward one and I’m ready for gybing. Pulling both stops a ton of slack from laying around the deck and causing problems. I also had to reinforce under my deck attachments as the loads when the leeward one is vertical are pretty strong. I have a tackle vang, but when sheets are eased, I take a preventor out to a midships cleat and back to a winch, so then have a 3 point hold on the boom end. Having raced for many years, I really did not want a traveller with all the lines, winches and tackles. When going to weather, or close reach, it’s easy to put which ever sheet needs adjusting on the winch and give it a tweak. A couple of improvements that I’m thinking about when I get to return to the boat (Separate story: It’s in New Zealand and I’m stuck here in US, Covid, coming up 2 years now) is to have the 2 sheets different colors. There’s a lot of white line spread around sometimes. Also thinking about having only 2 feet, or so, of tackle and 4-5 ft of dyneema strops to the boom. This would save 20ft +/- of sheet length but might end up having flying blocks, if the gybe got out of hand. Overall, the system works really well for me and mainsail trim is where I want it.
You almost got it right. If you attach the preventers/sheets to the toe-rail just aft of the side chain plates and attach/use 2 boom bails to separate load on the boom, you will have control of the mainsail all the way out over the water, there are no dangerous lines in the cockpit, you cannot have a dangerous accidental jibe, all jibes are controlled safe events, control lines can be run along the side deck into the cockpit. You need to attach the preventer out on the toe rail. I’ve been using that system for decades and installed it on several boats successfully.