Quote:
Originally Posted by colemj
I'm always surprised at the controversy around B&R rigs. Highly-fractional, diamond-supported, swept-spreader, no-backstay rigs are the standard on catamarans - and there is no controversy there.
Mark
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But...not the big radically back swept spreaders...most cats have no spreaders at all on the side stays at all.
The B&R rig obviously works, no higher failure rates than other designs that I've ever heard of, but those big back swept spreaders on a cruising
boat dont make sense to me. On a high performance
boat, for which they were originally designed, they make sense because the apparent
wind is almost never aft of beam and it allows you to carry a big roachy main. On a cruising boat, all they do is get in the way off the
wind (and not very deep off at that).
I think the primary reason
Hunter went with them was to eliminate the backstay and thus open up transom access for swimming etc. So, eliminating that advantage by adding a backstay, makes no sense to me especially since it is not structurally necessary.