You’ll might have seen this happen at your fleet before. On Sunday, I had the mainsheet jump off the winch drum on my Marblehead… Twice, it did it!!

Wiggle the left hand joystick and nothing happens – the boat is not in a rush to go anywhere.

Apparently the most common cause for this is that the shock cord sheet tensioner did not have enough tension in it. My boat had been laid up for winter in a nice warm room held at 18-19 degrees, but I confess it did not occur to me to ease the tensioner off for those months. An odd mistake, because I was meticulous about this aspect when storing our big keelboats.

In the photo above, the drum is dismounted and out of the photo so we can see in there. The fine orange line in the photo is the mainsheet. Can you see the nice double thickness end on the sheet, designed for threading in – more of this later.

The first time it jumped off the solution was to dismount the drum, wind the sheet on, replace the drum (it sits on that hex nut you can see) and pop the bolt back in.

We might have misdiagnosed it – as not long later I had rudder control but no sheets again. This time it was clear that the sheets had come entirely off the drum.

I tried a dozen times, two dozen probably, to thread that lovely orange line back into God’s tiniest little hole in the drum. Impossible. In the boat park with cool fingers, it simply refused to cooperate.

Tip from GH :- get a bit of super glue on it and turn the end of the line into a 10mm spike. Then you can push it through….

This is the final solution when we put it back together. PH threaded a little gizmo bead on the end, so it won’t pull through there again in a hurry. Weighs practically nothing, so I hope this is the ultimate repair.

Resolution for me:-

Find a way to store the boat during the week with just the tiniest amount of tension in the shock cord without easing it so much it climbs off the drum. Plus check the tensioner regularly!!