Easier mainsail raising on the Bandit 17

One of the hardest things for me on my Bandit was to raise the mainsail by myself. I can raise the mast and run the mainsail halyard line inside the cockpit and around the cheek block before I launch, which looks like this:

[www.sailmfg.com]

Then I'd:
set the tiller straight (I have a "tiller tamer" - essential equipment!)
head the boat into the wind (I use a trolling motor for this - I don't know how I'd get along without it)
attach the boom (the sail holds the boom up, so it's always wandering around the cockpit trying to scratch it up)
unroll the sail from the boom (all over the cockpit floor)
find the top of the sail (it's a pretty big sail)
attach the top of the mainsail to the correct halyard (I've marked it with a colored cable tie, just to make it obvious)
feed the sail edge (a bolt rope) into the mast slot
pull up on the halyard line to raise the sail with one hand and keep feeding the bolt rope into the mast slot with the other

Usually, somewhere along the line, the boat turns slightly off the wind, the wind catches the sail, drags the boom around the cockpit, and blows the sail all over my head, so I really have to hustle to get the thing up so that I can tie it off and race to the tiller before the wind blows the entire boat over sideways. This boat is light as a cork, has no ballast, and has a LOT of sail area for the weight.

The main problem is, the bolt rope doesn't feed into the mast slot very well, so it constantly jams up - and I can't let go of the halyard line to fix it without dropping the whole sail again (the cleat for the mainsail is inside the cabin, just out of convenient reach).

To make this process easier, I cleaned out the mast slot really well (on my first launch, dirt got it there some way - about 18 feet up, of course) and lubricated it with this white, dry-lube stuff I found at Home Depot. This helped some, but not as much as I had hoped.. I thought about the problem a lot and finally figured out that I needed a better way to hold the halyard line so that I can fix bolt rope/mast slot problems with both hands free.

Therefore, after looking at a lot of sailboat hardware, I ordered a different block (pulley) to hold the mainsail halyard line; I got it from eBay to save some money. It's a fiddle block with cam cleat and beckett. I attached it to an existing D-ring on the base of the mast support, near the original block:

[www.sailmfg.com]

Now, when I raise the sail, if the bolt rope wanders out of the mast slot, I pull up hard on the halyard line to lock it in the cam cleat and then I can use both hands to pull the sail back down slightly and force it back into the slot. Then I step on the line to force it out of the cam and keep pulling it up with one hand and feeding the sail with the other.

I'd still like to make this process easier, but this has been a big improvement!