One of the things you experience on a race to Hawaii is that you spend a long time (days) on the same tack. When you have minimal crew on deck it's common to cross sheet (either the jib, or especially the spinnaker) so that you can keep crew on the high side of the boat. We can do this but the sheeting angle causes the sheet to rub on the combing of the cockpit. Not a problem for a short period, but when you do this days on end you can rub a groove in the gelcoat. We solved this last race by taking a thin cutting board (<1mm), cutting a small piece and taping it to the combing to protect the gelcoat. Admittedly a bit of a McGyver, but it worked all the way to Hawaii. This race I wanted to come up with something a bit more refined.
Here you can see how the sheet (in this case led the way the spinnaker sheet would go) rubs against the cockpit combing.
I looked at fabricating some thin carbon fiber (or other material) pads that could protect the area, but found these to be a bit expensive. While I was at the boat I started messing around to see how much I'd need to deflect the sheet to protect the surface and found that a pencil width (about 1/4") worked just fine.
Here you have lines representing both the spinnaker sheet (the forward line) and the jib sheet (the aft line). I'm less worried about the jib sheet because it doesn't get trimmed as often as the spinnaker sheet.
Turns out that a rub strake is exactly 1/4" high and fits the area nicely. It deflects the sheets just enough to avoid rubbing on the combing, does not interfere with sitting in this area, and looks pretty good. I over drilled some holes (not penetrating the bottom skin) and epoxied them to protect the core material (balsa). Then tapped in some #8 screws and bingo, problem solved.
Check that one off the list...
