how tight?

[hillyarder]

just read an article in pbo about tightening your rigging. i just tightened mine until i thought it was tight enough. is there a more technical way of doing it. hillyard 9 tonner, wooden spars.

cheers

 

[Strathglass]

It should be tight enough such that when going to windward in a 4/5 the leward shroud is just begining to appear slack. Any more then most hulls won't take it any less then you won't point.

Iain

 

[Peterduck]

Keep in mind that the purpose of standing rigging is to stop the mast from falling over. That's all it's there for. In the case of a forestay, you can hang a jib or staysail off it. If you have an old carvel built boat you can open up your garboards simply by having the shrouds too tight. You'll be effectively pulling the mast through the keel. On my old gaff ketch the shrouds are just slack at rest, so that by the time they are tight on the windward side, there has been about 1/64" of movement between the shroud and the bottlescrew. Gaffers tend to have slacker rigging than bermudan yachts, carvel boats should have slacker rigging than plastic boats.
Peter.

 

[Adrian_Morgan]

Laurent Giles wrote as succinct a guide to rigging as I've seen anywhere. To precis: the cap shrouds (to the masthead) should be the tightest; the intermediates less so and the lowers even less. That's because the longer the shroud the more it will stretch. The aim is for all sets of shrouds to be equally tensioned when the rig is loaded up (on the wind). The mast will then stand up straight. Backstay and forestays can be as tight as you dare (within reason) to hold up the jib luff.

On the wind, the leeward shrouds will be taking no load and will all show the same level of slackness. Mine all move about 3 inch in unison. Don't, Giles warned be tempted to wind out that slack each time you tack. Keep doing that and you will indeed wind the mast through the bottom of the boat. In the old magazines there was a huge debate about slack vs taut rigging. Some argued that slack rigging allowed the rig to move with the boat. My feeling is that if you have a well-found wooden bermudan rigged boat, get the rig as rigid as you feel happy with. Too slack and the mast will be whipping about, placing added load on the standing rigging. In short: tight, but not too tight and remember cap shroud tighter than lowers. The aim is to keep the mast in the boat, and keep it dead upright. Remember that forestay tension is vital for windward performance.

 

[hillyarder]

Thanks Adrian

More by luck than judgement, that arrangement is more or less what I already have. I suppose its a bit of a black art, like so much with these old boats.

 

[Gordonmc]

I had a feeling the standing rigging on my 8 tonner was a bit tight.

I never realised by how much until I slackened everyhting off ready for stepping the mast. For the first time the door to the heads closed without jamming on the ceiling!

Its a deck-stepped mast.