Zeeko ultimate bar no clamcleat no depower straps?

[Lokihel]

With some clever use use of a spliced loop around the low friction ring you could make the setup look a lot neater, and more importantly make it safer.
The way it is now, if the low friction ring breaks, you lose your centre lines.
If you have a loop around the low friction ring with the line running through the middle, the ring could break but everything would stay together. This type of fail-safe is used almost all the time on larger sailing boats.

[rynhardt]

What's the little clip attached to the bar rynhardt?

Also would it make more sense for the rope to move through the hole in the low friction ring rather than around the edge?

The little clip was a thumb operated toggle to clamp the depower rope and adjust the trim. But in practice it was a bit clumsy and grabbing the rope works just as well.

There're a number of ways to use the low friction ring. When I built this more than a year ago I obviously thought this was the best way. Can't recall what exactly the thought process was. Anyway it's been working flawlessly since then so it can't be all bad.

[rynhardt]

With some clever use use of a spliced loop around the low friction ring you could make the setup look a lot neater, and more importantly make it safer.
The way it is now, if the low friction ring breaks, you lose your centre lines.
If you have a loop around the low friction ring with the line running through the middle, the ring could break but everything would stay together. This type of fail-safe is used almost all the time on larger sailing boats.

Dunno. If the ring breaks it just means the top rope rests on the top knot. A bit more friction to adjust but no biggie.
I tried to explain before.. The ring is not a stressed member. The rope passes through it in a figure 8. But there are not 2 loops attached to the ring, in which case it would have been a stressed member and failure would have been catastrophic

[rynhardt]

As far as I understand , you do not use the custom ball on the bar to depower ? I wasthinking ofbtryingvyour good idea to becable to depower with one hand... So why don't you keep the zeeko H-Stopper in that case ? It provides a good handle to depower.
The stopper alone can be sourced to zeeko, approx 12 euro.

Otherwise, if you keep on pulling on the rope directly, maybe you can try to paint one of the two to distinguish them ... (Hope i am clear) ;

On my own system I have removed the friction ring by a pulley. It does not seem to slide unvoluntary and ease the depowering.

I can't take credit for the idea, but god knows I can't remember where I saw it.
As you say, you can always improve it, but for me it'll take it from 98% to 99%, very little improvement since I don't mind the downsides.
For sure if you commercialise it you need to may want to make it more user friendly.
I think the whole setup is fairly robust and will probably work as well with rings, pulleys or whatever.
I built my first iteration and it really was good enough that I never bothered with further iterations.

[rynhardt]

Very cool. With the streamlined version of pulling on the rope directly, can a stopper ball still be used?

Dunno. I think the original Zeeko setup was a movable stopper.
I don't use stoppers because I prefer a very long depower range, and 2 line 'flag' out.
Maybe the lack of a stopper will hinder adoption.

[alford]

In an effort to simplify what if I used an Ozone trimmer bracket up top instead of the mouse ears and low friction ring? I'm not sure if it's big enough to handle 9mm line but if it did it would be clean and simple. Thoughts?

[rynhardt]

In an effort to simplify what if I used an Ozone trimmer bracket up top instead of the mouse ears and low friction ring? I'm not sure if it's big enough to handle 9mm line but if it did it would be clean and simple. Thoughts?

Looks like it could work if it's rated for those kinda loads. You could probably go down to 6mm Amsteel quite safely.

[rynhardt]

Just did a bit of google-fu on that trimmer bracket and it looks like a great solution. Might even upgrade my setup.

[Laughingman]

What's the little clip attached to the bar rynhardt?

Also would it make more sense for the rope to move through the hole in the low friction ring rather than around the edge?

I think that clip is for auto unwind. just push the bar out and it will unwind the trim line?

[rynhardt]

What's the little clip attached to the bar rynhardt?

Also would it make more sense for the rope to move through the hole in the low friction ring rather than around the edge?

I think that clip is for auto unwind. just push the bar out and it will unwind the trim line?

The clip works both ways. Grab the clip with your thumb and it clamps the line. Move the bar up or down to adjust the trim. Problem is that the clip did not grip so well on a wet line. If you can engineer a better line grip then it becomes a very intuitive way to adjust trim.