RichardDunstan
New member
I posted this reply to someone who was asking about inner forestays. It might help a little in your decision...
We have a temporary inner forestay which is attached 2/3s of the way up the mast. We have a masthead rig. Round here (Melbourne), they are called babystays and mainly get used when you are double or triple reefed. It is normally attached to the base of the mast and we usually only run it forward if the mast is taking a pounding. Used in conjunction with the checkstays, it significantly reduces the flex in big swells (6m+).
Our storm headsail actually runs up the headsail foil but you have to attach it around the foil as well in case it rips out of the track. The sail is yankee cut and there isn't a lot of it. Interestingly, this design of headsail received a lot of critisism after the '98 Sydney-Hobart because, little as it was, there was too much canvas aloft.
I'm not all that happy with the stormsail running up the track and would prefer to see it hanked on properly. By attaching round the foil, we are sort of doing this but it wouldn't be easy to do in a big sea.
On the babystay, we run a small staysail on it. Once again, this is yankee cut. We use this on a broad reach sometimes with another headsail in light airs or on its own if the weather goes pear shaped. The cut is good because at that stage in heavy weater we are normally taking water over the deck. We've burst our #4 a couple of time because it has a normal low cut foot. The sail has a wire luff with eyes at either end. We have a swivel catch on the halyard and the deck eye.
In this way, when it gets a bit rough, we take the bag on deck, attach the clews, tack and head whilst it is still in the bag and we don't have to worry about it twisting when we hoist it.
The staysail forms part of our heavy weather strategy. Our normal white sails run down to a #4 headsail with two tucks in the main. After that, we go down to three tucks and then change to the staysail. This is good for about 60kts, depending on the seas.
About this time we stop racing.
Afterwards, we go to our orange stormsails - the tiny headsail and the trisail.
Rich
We have a temporary inner forestay which is attached 2/3s of the way up the mast. We have a masthead rig. Round here (Melbourne), they are called babystays and mainly get used when you are double or triple reefed. It is normally attached to the base of the mast and we usually only run it forward if the mast is taking a pounding. Used in conjunction with the checkstays, it significantly reduces the flex in big swells (6m+).
Our storm headsail actually runs up the headsail foil but you have to attach it around the foil as well in case it rips out of the track. The sail is yankee cut and there isn't a lot of it. Interestingly, this design of headsail received a lot of critisism after the '98 Sydney-Hobart because, little as it was, there was too much canvas aloft.
I'm not all that happy with the stormsail running up the track and would prefer to see it hanked on properly. By attaching round the foil, we are sort of doing this but it wouldn't be easy to do in a big sea.
On the babystay, we run a small staysail on it. Once again, this is yankee cut. We use this on a broad reach sometimes with another headsail in light airs or on its own if the weather goes pear shaped. The cut is good because at that stage in heavy weater we are normally taking water over the deck. We've burst our #4 a couple of time because it has a normal low cut foot. The sail has a wire luff with eyes at either end. We have a swivel catch on the halyard and the deck eye.
In this way, when it gets a bit rough, we take the bag on deck, attach the clews, tack and head whilst it is still in the bag and we don't have to worry about it twisting when we hoist it.
The staysail forms part of our heavy weather strategy. Our normal white sails run down to a #4 headsail with two tucks in the main. After that, we go down to three tucks and then change to the staysail. This is good for about 60kts, depending on the seas.
About this time we stop racing.
Afterwards, we go to our orange stormsails - the tiny headsail and the trisail.
Rich