Back in the earlier days of windsurfing sails came with clew holes for both the outhaul and downhaul. Back then my downhaul rope was permanently threaded through a pulley block that was hooked into the downhaul clew hole. It was a quick and easy process to hook the block into the clew and then downhaul the sail.

It could have been around the late 90s sail manufacturers started replacing downhaul clew holes with integrated pulley blocks. I bought some Sailworks sails around 1998 and found they had the integrated clew block. The integrated block was not as good as the pulley block I had used.

Since then almost all sails sold appear to have integrated pulley blocks. I can understand it would be horrible to downhaul a sail through a clew hole and some people would just thread the rope through the clew and then complain about it. However having a pulley block threaded to the downhaul and hooking it through the sail's clew would make rigging up a little bit easier and quicker.

Its just a little thing but in a way it seems like integrating pulley blocks into sails has been a step backwards, making rigging a bit more complex and time consuming than it could be.