Salty Dog wrote:I I do not have a good feel for the size of the lines. I thought 1/4 was too small for my hands but found out my out haul was 1/4 and it seems good. I ordered 5/16 for my jib halyard tensioner and it came in larger than I thought it was going to be.
Mainsheet and jibsheet are lines that you operate continuously. Having those at the upper end of a size range for ease of handling makes some sense, for all other lines, you can probably "think small" quite effectively. I find that I've moved halyards, outhauls, reef lines etc. down in size over the years.
Most modern rope is stronger than you need for a DS at sizes that may be too uncomfortable to handle, so you'll always be using more or less oversized lines from the point of view of the loads that they need to support.
From the point of view of handling a line, the design makes a huge difference. Some rope will be very slippery and gripping even larger sizes will be uncomfortable because you need to use so much hand strength to get a grip. Other ropes are the complete opposite. For an example of a really "grippy" rope, there is FSE Robline's
Racing Sheet. At the same time if feels soft and pliant, but holds well in ratchet blocks. Their "dinghy control" is a smoother/stiffer rope that I found works well at rather small sizes for many of the auxiliary tasks. (I use the smallest size, where it almost looks like a heavy yarn for lashing blocks to places where I don't want or cannot use metal shackles.)
Salty Dog wrote: I will probably replace all my running rigging I just have to decide size and color.
For main (and perhaps jib sheets) you could use ratchet blocks in your rigging. That would transfer some of the holding power from your hand to the block, even when you are running the sheet out of your hand. That would allow you to go towards the lower end of the size range.
I've never paid much attention to colors, I did things piecemeal and bought or used lines that worked for the purpose. The one place where I wish I had real color-coding is for spinnaker sheets. I ended up with two red ones (and now I am too cheap to switch one of the to green, but it would make life easier.)
Speaking about "cheap". Some of my lines are from the remainder bucket at the local marine store. Needless to say, they're never really ideal for the purpose, but definitely good enough to get by. When i put the ratchet block in, I used the same rope as the store had in their ratchet block display. That was a good choice, even though not the cheapest. The combination does work really well.
In general, by going to the smallest diameter that works for the purpose, you can be "cheap" without sacrificing performance.