Anyone know what a "mainstay cable" is?
- Thread starter snooks
- Start date
Salty John
Well-Known Member
I have to get myself one of those "front sails".
E39mad
Well-Known Member
Forestay iirc
AuntyRinum
Well-Known Member
Perhaps they're quoting Practical Boat Owner
http://www.pbo.co.uk/news/537479/snapped-mainstay-prompts-southsea-yacht-mayday
bigwow
Well-Known Member
I take it he had an inner mainstay cable as well or he might have lost the sticky up thing as well.
Cantata
Well-Known Member
Ye gods that's terrible. I was about to have a moan about the dire reporting in local rags, but PBO.....
snooks
Well-Known Member
If you get a few you could make a bob or two selling them, I think they would be popular.
Salty John
Well-Known Member
I could get some "back sails", too, and sell them as sets. My fortune awaits!
James_Calvert
Well-Known Member
Salty John
Well-Known Member
It might be stay and splice the main cable, but I'm not sure.
sarabande
Well-Known Member
it's the mainbrace that was the hardest rigging splice to make, hence after its completion, the reward of rum to the crew.
Oh, PS, I see that one of the mainstays has now become a forestay, but the snapped mainstay is still there, in the original news release from the RNLI on the frontpage.
Oh, PS, I see that one of the mainstays has now become a forestay, but the snapped mainstay is still there, in the original news release from the RNLI on the frontpage.
snowleopard
Well-Known Member
Yes, It's the forward lower stay of the mainmast on e.g. a barque.
I thought everyone knew that.
prv
Well-Known Member
geoid96
Well-Known Member
I always thought a cable was for carrying electricity or a cable car. You learn something new every day!
AuntyRinum
Well-Known Member
It's also 200 yards.
James_Calvert
Well-Known Member
And something in a knitting pattern (I am led to believe).
geoid96
Well-Known Member
That's a mainstay cable for a very tall mast!
sarabande
Well-Known Member
'cable' is a way of combining 3 hawser-laid ropes (what we think of as normal boaty rope) in a lay that is against their own lay direction, so that you have a stronger, more chafe-resistant, more elastic, but less flexible rope. As used in anchor cable or towing cables. They are b*ggars to splice.