Sounds like a very nice setup. We also dump the main down the aft cabin
companionway hatch with our stock mainsheet setup. There is not much room in the aft portion of the cockpit with helm right there and extra folks onboard, so we find that the jibsheets tend to get tangled with the mainsheet and crew if we are doing a lot of tacking maneuvers. Even with just two crew the main seems to always get tangled with the helmsmans feet or rear end.
We are using our
bluewater cruising boat somewhat improperly at the moment sailing it as a pleasure day-sailor and
racing and fooling around with our friends and other sailing club members in their own boats around the crowded Chicago area. The Rasmus is
really not a
race boat but it can beat a
Beneteau Oceanus and keep up with older Hunters, Catalinas, Pearsons, and C&C's -especially when the
wind and the waves pick up. When the
wind gets over 20-25 knots and the waves approach 10+ feet we have the advantage. Yes, we really do enjoy sailing on those conditions.
I gather your new traveler is high enough so that it doesn't interfere with the
emergency tiller? On our boat there is a permanently-mounted E-tiller made out of stainless tubing which the
windvane autopilot connects to when it is being used. The tiller is a little shorter than the stock one, and comes almost right up to the back of the cockpit. It does get in the way sometimes, but is also very handy to have right there. I've used it to scull a few times when approaching a
mooring ball in difficult wind conditions to keep from loosing the bow to the wind. Once the
wheel mounting bolt came loose and the
wheel fell right off in the helm's hands during one of those heavy-weather
sails I mentioned above. We were on a fairly broad reach at the time and had I not been on mainsheet and been able to reach back for the the tiller instantly to correct our course we would have crash-jibed at the worst possible moment.