You’ve made a good, informative video although your comments on the traveler (“you don’t really need it”) and those who’ve added one “hardly ever use it”….. I respectfully disagree. I have the Performance version, no arch, and installed a traveler. It was a surprisingly easy installation. I love it and use it all the time. The O38.1 was Beneteau’s most successful model- 765 built! No longer being produced, and its replacement is…..well, no comment. TheO38.1 is a terrific design, versatile and comfortable, and when properly modified and set up, is an outstanding blue water-capable sailing vessel.
Thank you for your great comment Kirk. Whether you "need" a traveler depends on how you sail. The fact that you got a performance vesrsion tells everything and obviously would be of far more importance for you and the way you sail but for most of our Southern California customers, many of whom are new to boating and therefore are not performance sailors, they don't need or want the extra complication but if they did, fortunately they have the option to add one and once they have progressed in their learning curve and start racing a bit, then they will often opt for these more performance oriented options. Everyone enjoys boating differently and as long as they are getting out on the water it's a good thing. I heartily agree about the design of the 38.1. Fantastic all round but the initial offering of the 38 was not nearly the boat that the 38,1 became and so it goes with each new Beneteau design ( which they completely change every 5-6 years) they nearly always find a way to make them better than the previous model and if not, the pretty quickly fix the major objections. Fortunately Beneteau are big enough that they have the means and creativity to do so and be nimble in their design changes. Enjoy, enjoy your wonderful boat
I promise you will never miss it. End boom sheeting means the traveller on top of the arch is of little value as it would only move the boom a foot or two either side of Center
I want to move the boom of my catamaran to a hardtop and get rid of the traveler. The height of the boom above the hardtop is exactly the same as 38.1 and your video clearly showed me how I would rebuild the system. My question is: can I place the blocks at a decent distance from each other on the hardtop and will this make the boom more uncontrollable? Now I have a boom sheet traveler of 4 meters and this is the distance at which the blocks on the hardtop will be located. Thanks in advance for your answer.
If you have traveller and you just keep it centered then you have the same ease of use as in this configuration but you have more options if you want to and you can have more safety with unintended gibes when your boom is held by traveler on the side.
The main reason for a traveller is to bring the boom to the center-line when close-hauled. With this mainsheet block system, the boom is dead on center when sheeted on fully. One could add a traveler we should add tremendous complexity to get the control lines to wear they would be easily adjusted....all this for something so rarely needed and when one is cheating on the end of the Boom like this The Traveler would need to be about 8 ft long to be effective. We have many very experienced Sailors and ex racers who sail these boats quite happily and don't miss a traveler....its not the point of the design.
Actually this design is far better than having a traveler, the ability to center the boom is far easier. The only downside which isn’t any loss is you cant get the boom to windward. Anyways who uses a traveler for unintended jibes? Even as secondary safety it would be minimal on most designs.
Hello, and thank you for your feedback. Of course, leading the main sheet back to the helm positions is desirable in certain circumstances, but would also require a complete redesign of the deck layout to enable that feature. It is actually more complex than one realizes as it requires a number of deck organizers and deck-mounted shieves to redirect the line in direction and elevation as the line has to drop down from the cabin-top to the aft helm about 2 ft. This causes a lot more resistance in the main sheet. As you mentioned it is more advantageous if one is single-handing to enable the helmsman to trim the main sheet but it also makes it a lot more complicated if one is sailing with a spinnaker and has crew trying to help as it gets really congested with both winches by the helm station and main sheet, spinnaker sheet and jib sheets all in the same confined area. This has been done on the new Beneteau Oceanis 40.1, 46.1 and 51.1 and is great for single-handing but it does make it very crowded under the above circumstances with a lot of lines leading to a small area. There is no one perfect layout and each has it's advantages and disadvantages but most of these boats are being designed for very short handed sailing and that is why the newer models are adopting the philosiphy that you suggest.
I get the way that the rig works, but my big issue with these designs is twin rudders. Sure they work fine when sailing but I have owned a conventional 45 footer and when manoeuvring it in harbours and having to contend with crosswinds I found the ability to kick the stern of boat sideways with a burst of revs pushing water against the angled rudder a huge advantage, which is completely lost by having no rudder directly behind the prop.
It is a trade between near to perfect steering while you sail on a good heel (though our 38.1 just stops heel with the lee rudder vertical) and manouverability. With our bow thruster we are able to compensate the missing rudder kick.
@@covi9465 So a 38 foot boat needs a bow thruster. I had one on my Jeanneau 45.2 but quickly learned not to rely on it at all because any sort of cross wind defeated it.
Me too at heart. Grew up sailing wooden gaff-riggers in Cape Town so I love traditional boats too. What I find very interesting is that many of the working boats-- fishing boats and pilot boats from the 17 and 1800s had a lot of the elements that m,odern hull and rig designs have...plumb bows, flat, wide transoms, mast back and raked with multiple headsails. But then people started racing them and rules got involved and boats started to be designed to racing rules and everything went pear-shaped for a very long time until the open-class single-handers came along and everything changed back to stable, predictable designs easily handled in any weather by one person and thats what we have today....thank goodness!!
Thank you so much Bill for taking valuable time out of your day to comment on my video, feeding the algorithm and making it more popular. Your help is massively appreciated 🤣🤣🤣
Well, judgments of a Oceanic perfoming in over 30kn winds from someone having ran away are missing facts. We sailed our 38.1 in winds well over 30kn, this with my wife and me as only crew. The running rig is very easy to adjust for all kind of winds, and one does not have to leave the safety of the cockpit to do so. Kindly, do not talk about something you have lived yourself!
