Attaching a Removable Inner Forestay to the Mast

[toddedger]

This is what I was referring to as a halyard lock. Hall Spars makes some nice ones without trip lines but you don't want to know the price.

K Hook furling Halyard Lock

[toddedger]

I just got the January Sail magazine in the mail. There is a article on storm sails and there set up. They quote a sailmaker suggesting boats without an inner stay should use a torque rope luff with a continuous line furler. He goes on to say that with a 2:1 halyard you can get sufficient tension on the luff of a storm sail. There's a lot more but I don't think it would be right to reprint copyrighted material, so those of interested might want to pick up a copy.

[estarzinger]

Originally Posted by toddedger

He goes on to say that with a 2:1 halyard you can get sufficient tension on the luff of a storm sail.

I will comment that if anyone wants to try this . . . They should make sure the halyard block/sheave is up to the loads. Typical halyard loads are rather lower than stay loads. We crushed a couple sets of harken bearings when we first started playing with high modulus luffs on 2:1 halyards. I believe it is not the tension you crank on with the winch (which you can easily calculate and measure) that imposes the biggest loads, but the mast whipping/pumping in waves that does it. There are also some sail dynamics (sail popping full in a jybe) that impose loads.

As an aside, this suggests not using a masthead halyard but rather a lower halyard, for a storm jib 2:1, as the whipping/pumping will be much lower.

In any case . . . It certainly can and has been successfully done. But it is NOT as simple and straightforward as many sailmakers want to assume. I did a delivery recently with a brand new (untested except in a 10kt 'trial') storm jib set like this (quite expensive for the owner with all the top if the line furling hardware). And it was a disaster. Despite a lot if tinkering and adjustment (on the bow in unpleasant conditions) we could not get it to set smoothly. But later, at the end of the passage, with access to fedex and the owners credit card, I got it going nicely.