Sprite missing traveler

[mjarpe]

I just bought a 10 foot O'day Sprite on Craigslist, my first sailboat. Absolute newbie, here. I took a class at Community Boating in Boston one summer and that's it, so I'm learning as I go.

The O'day looks to be in good shape and the last two owners never even got it in the water. Somewhere among those boat exchanges the traveler got lost. I have a detailed description of the standing rigging that says the traveler is a wire bridle that attaches to either end of the transom, with a double block in the middle. The main sheet loops through one block and the other block is on the wire. There is no hardware on the transom and there are no extra wires or lines in the sail bag, so I think I'm going to have to build one from scratch. I bought a traveler block at DR Marine. Now I need to attach a wire bridle to the transom with the block in the middle. The transom has a couple of holes in either end where I could put some kind of hardware, but what to put there?

The main question here is: will I have to adjust the length of the wire bridle ever? And the sub question is will I have to adjust it on the fly? I can make an attachment permanent length with toggles and eyes at either end, or I can make one of them adjustable (like a Ronstan shroud adjuster) or I can put in a turnbuckle if I'll ever have to adjust while sailing.

Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Sunbird22358]

I think (actually 95% sure) that those travelers were of a fixed-length. You might be able to use a piece of light line instead, with a stopper knot tied in each end to keep the line from running through the holes. That is how our 2 sailing dinghies are rigged. I've included a few pics of the original wire-bridle travellers on a couple of SPRITES that I saw online.

 

[mjarpe]

Thanks

Those pictures are much clearer than the ones I found. I found the original holes where the traveler once attached, with a piece of cable still glued down in there. I'll drill it out and glue another wire bridle in the same place. I also just found out that at least one of the aluminum poles I thought was a boom kicker is actually a spinnaker pole. There is a spinnaker in the sail bag but I never did learn how to use one. That's going to be an adventure for another day.