They had good intentions I think. The Traveler on Fujin is a decent quality one, however I don't think it was intended for a P34. Instead of sending the lines into the cockpit via blocks, this thing has little cam cleats on each end of it. Since the traveler is in front of the dodger, it always meant either going up on deck to adjust the traveler (on both sides of the boat), or unzipping the center window of the dodger and operating the traveler from the companionway steps. Neither is very handy when tacking a lot.
The dodger had some small holes with metal eyes on each side to let these lines come through the dodger, but since the cleats were ON the traveler (in front of the dodger), these were about useless.
Unless of course there is a way to remove the cleats from the traveler and cleat them somewhere else behind the dodger.
 |
| cleat removed from traveler, line passing through hole in the dodger. It just happens to line up with where a third clutch would go! |
Fujin has dual spinlock rope clutches on each side of the companionway. The port side has main halyard and reefing line. The starboard side has main sheet and jib halyard. I wondered if these duals could be replaced with tripples to accommodate the extra lines. After lots of measuring, and lowering the headliner in the cabin to see how they are fastened, I decided to go for it. Next, I had to get over the sticker shock: Tripple XTS Rope clutches are $320 ea!
Ok, we had a couple
charters coming up that could help. And so the work begins...
 |
| The existing dual XTS rope clutch |
First step is to remove the old clutches. Here is the first complication. In true maritime fashion, the mounting bolts for these were hack-sawed off after the nuts and washers were put on rendering the threads completely screwed for ever trying to unscrew these nuts again. There was no choice but to drill them out.
The interior access to the backing nuts was fairly easy on Fujin. I had to just remove a few headliner screws on the main cabin headliner to bend it down enough to fit my arm up there. On the starboard side, the clutch was over the head headliner which has a light mounted in it. I removed that one completely and hung it from a bungee cord.
 |
| Port side access |
 |
| Starboard side access |
I bought a brand new 5/16" bit and started chewing away at the stainless bolts.
 |
| Drilling out the mounting bolts |
 |
| One down, seven to go |
Eventually (and with only one drill bit), all 8 bolts' heads were drilled through and removed.
 |
| Port side clutch removed |
Next, it's time to drill the third set of new holes on each side for the tripple clutch.
 |
| First, pilot holes |
 |
| And then the real holes |
Now, the easy part: mounting the shiny new clutches. I cleaned up the surface and put a nice smooth layer of life-caulk down, set the clutches in, and dropped the bolts through.
The part I'm leaving out here is the THREE trips to West Marine, one trip to Lowels (because the bin for the bolts I needed was empty at west marine) and home (to grind off the edge of one of the backing washers). I think I spent more time in the car than on the boat to complete this.
But eventually it was done, cleaned up and tested and the headliners re-attached.
 |
| The port side |
 |
| Starboard side |
The results are encouraging so far. We've sailed a few times with this setup and it's great to be able to control the traveler from inside the cockpit. We have no boom vang on Fujin, so the traveler is really the only way to have control over the draft (or draught) of the sail. In the past, since it was such a pain to tweak, we would just not bother.
The other good news is that I sold the dual spinlock clutches on ebay for $184 for the pair. This greatly reduced the pain of this project.
