The old downhaul was routed down the starboard side, to the same winch as the topping lift. Which meant that when flying the spinnaker, the starboard cabintop winch was needed for both of those purposes, while the port cabintop winch was unused. Jonny had pulled the downhaul hardware (a fairlead and turning block) out of the deck months earlier anyway, and filled the holes with epoxy, so I was free to put it wherever I wanted. I ended up routing it just inboard of the handrails on the port side, back to the port cabintop winch. We’ll try it out this weekend.
The topping lift runs from the mast down the starboard cabintop and comes under the dodger just right of the companionway. The old rope clutch exploded one day when we were out sailing (which is my way of saying that the pin busted apart the plastic). The old clutch was mounted atop standoffs also–not particularly strong. Finally, it was a terrible lead from the clutch to the winch. So we replaced the clutch and added a turning block jobby–check out the pictures. It’s a necessary evil; I wish we didn’t need the turning block jobby, but I’m glad that it exists to solve this problem nicely.
You’ll notice that both the clutch and the turning block mounted on top of blocks of polyethylene (starboard in one case, UHMW in another case) in order to provide a fair lead.
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