Triatic Stay Tension Question

[Trevj]

I have just become the proud owner of a Wilf O'Kell yawl, the first two-master that I have ever owned. When I first inspected it, the triatic stay seemed very slack, It runs from the top of the main mast, through a pulley on the mizzen and then down the mizzen to a turnbuckle at shoulder height on the mizzen, so that it may be adjusted from the deck. There is about three inches of slack in it and the present owner has a shock cord pulling it out towards the mizzen shrouds.
I haven't been able to contact him as he's overseas for the foreseeable future
So, I polled three two-stick owners and got three different opinions . One- leave it slack. Two - tighten it just enough to take the obvious slack out of it. Three - tighten it until you see the mizzen move forward an inch or two.
Any further offers?





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[William_H]

At a guess you should take the slack out of it. Then look at how the two masts look under sailing load. The triatic would function both as the "foreastay" for the mizen and a backstay for the main. i imagine you would need the pull of the triatic to provide forestay tension on the genoa. I imagine the mizen sheet load and the aft sweep of the mizen side stays would provide the tension on the triatic.
I rather fear some on this forum would have you load up all the stays to 15% of max rated working load of the wire which would lead to everything very tight. I am not one however and we agreed to disagree. regards will

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[Jcorstorphine]

I built a small ketch rigged motor sailor about 20 years ago. As I could not get a suitable pair of backstays down to the deck near the Mizzen I chose to rig it with a Triatic stay. The way I set it up was to set up the two masts at the correct rake with the Triatic fixed to the main. The other end was threaded through a pulley at the top of the mizzen down to a point where I could get at the end to make a compression swage ((Norseman) With the forestay and Mizzen backstay just under slight tension so as not to pull the two masts apart, the Triatic was made off and connected to a fitting on the mizzen. I forgot to say that this was connected with a tubular bottle screw. With all of the stays set up I slowly tensioned the fore and backstays with small adjustments to the Triatic in order to maintain the two masts parallel to each other.

As the previous post mentioned, best not to over tension and take the boat out for a sail. Lie back on the deck and look up at the main and the mizzen to see if they are bending. The end result should be a similar tension in the fore and back stays. Check the forestay by looking up to see how it bows when the jib is bent on. If you are not sure what it should look like, hitch a ride on a boat with a simpler rig and have a look.

Hope this helps

regards JC


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