Removable Inner Forestay - Advantage?

[grantmc]

I notice quite a number of adverts with 'Removable inner forestay' as a feature.
Here's an example: https://www.yachtworld.com/yacht/199...nt-39-9152838/

Please would the adults jot a few notes as to why this is an advantage, why/when you'd remove and of course put back. And in reality, when anyone ever actually would do so.

[shrspeedblade]

Ease of tacking the boat. My boat has one and I've only ever rigged it once just to test it out. Since I sail a lot in confined waters with LOTS of tacking it doesn't make sense to have it in the way most of the time.

Once I head off shore, or even down the coast, I imagine I'll rig it with the storm jib in it's bag ready to go because it will make deployment much easier if the winds really pick up, it gives some extra support to the mast/forestay, and it makes a great hand hold when you're up near the bow!

[rls8r]

shrspeedblade has nailed it.

I find it useful when I double (or triple) reef. If I didn't have the forestay sail then I'd have to reduce my headsail significantly. Doing that when double (or triple) reefed raises and moves forward the center of effort of the headsail quite a bit - and, unless there's padding - it changes the shape of the headsail. That upsets the balance of the boat. Instead, I'll drop (or actually, furl) the headsail and then rig the heavy forestay sail. Once that's done, the boat is more like a sloop, but with less sail area - making it easier to handle with a more comfortable ride. Of course, fiddling with the running backstays is a bit of a bother - but I feel that it's worth it.

I'll also set a lighter forestaysail (sometimes) when going upwind. I've found that the "slot effect" (sometime) does help me sail a bit closer to the wind and a bit faster. The boat becomes somewhat of a cutter.

Being able to remove the inner forestay is a boon, as shrspeedblade says, when I have to tack a lot. I don't have to thread the genoa through the slot and I don't have to worry about chafing the headsail on the inner forestay.

And again, as shrspeedblade says - it gives me something to hold onto when I'm on the foredeck.

Finally, I use it to help make a tree of lights as part of the Christmas decorations in season.

[bergius]

Originally Posted by grantmc

I notice quite a number of adverts with 'Removable inner forestay' as a feature.
Here's an example: https://www.yachtworld.com/yacht/199...nt-39-9152838/

Please would the adults jot a few notes as to why this is an advantage, why/when you'd remove and of course put back. And in reality, when anyone ever actually would do so.

We installed a removable inner forestay last winter. We rig it when wind is up, or when going offshore. We sailed quite a bit with the staysail last year, both because of high winds, and because we can point higher with it.



In light winds we keep the inner forestay stowed so that the genoa is easier to tack.

Our rig isn’t really designed for flying both headsails at once, but we’ve done it a couple of times just for the fun of it.

[Marathon1150]

We installed a removable inner forestay to fly the hank on storm jib and a hank on staysail. Normally it is not in place in order to make tacking easier. It sits off to the side in front of the starboard side shrouds. It takes about 5 minutes to rig it and get the sail up - we keep the sails in sail bags, pre-rigged with their respective sheets.

Having crewed on a boat that had an inner forestay with a roller furler mechanism, I found that having to go forward to pull the head sail through the slot between the two stays annoying. Having to move the removable inner forestay from its storage spot to the front of the boat might also seem annoying but the frequency of doing so is a lot less than the frequency of tacking.

[Fore and Aft]

Grantmc a lot of boats have a removable inner stay. When I normally ask the owner about it, the usual reply is it's in the locker somewhere. The headsail catching on the stay when tacking makes it a pia so it gets put away and never used. Or I often see the other way were the stay has been permanently mounted with the Highfield lever still being used instead of a rigging screw.
The small boats l like to sail really need the foredeck open for dinghy storage.
Cheers

[markwesti]

For our little cutter , we don't remove it , the Yankee with it's clew 8 feet off the deck and small square foot area passes over it with little problem . I was told , by the Westsail guru , Bud Taplin that it is there for the Drifter . And then only if you would need to tack repeatedly , we have never needed to do that so when we do tack it I'll just walk it around .

[MicHughV]

I had a removable forestay on My Landfall 43. When not in use it resided alongside the mast in a L shaped tube container thingy, where it spent most of it's time. It came with it's own track on the foredeck.

In all the years I owned that boat, I think I used it twice, both times in area sailboat races. It had it's own sail, a rather narrow blade type sail, which was useful only on a certain point of sail and only under certain wind conditions.

Did it make a difference. When everything was perfectly dialed in, it did create a " slot" between main and jib, under close reaching conditions, giving me maybe an extra 0.5 knots or so for the brief time it was up. I would not have bothered setting it up, but one of my crew during sailboat races was a gung-ho racer and he would play with the thing.
Besides being useful on a close reach, it had little value on any other point of sail imo.

Besides those times, I never used it for any reason, as I considered it to be a PIA.
Could it be used for a storm jib application......hmmmmm.....maybe....the forestay wire on my boat though tight was not tight enough and this affected sail shape.

I don't think I've seen a removable forestay on most sailboats attesting to it's dubious value.

[El Pinguino]

Mine is 'removeable'. It isn't totally removed, just unsecured at deck level and taken back towards the mast.
Its been 'in situ' now for some years as all sailing since 2019 has been offshore.
Originally had a 'senhouse slip/pelican hook' at the deck but that was changed to a hard fixing 20 plus years ago.

Edit.. it's what I hank my storm jibs on to. In the pic, 150 sq ft set, 50 sqft hanked on below it.

[nuku34]

Markwesti: either you misunderstood your Westsail guru, or he's dead wrong. A drifter is a large light-weight light-weather jib that is flown either attached to the forestay (that is the technical term for the outermost stay on a cutter) or in some cases is flown "free" ahead of the forestay on its own wire or low stretch luff.
You would NEVER fly a drifter on the staysail stay (that's the technical term for the "inner forestay" on a cutter). Drifters are usually as large or larger than the biggest jib and usually sheet to the stern quarter (like a spinnaker).

A "removable" staysail stay always refers to a stay whose deck end can be easily removed from the tang it attaches to and that end brought back to a temporary attachment either at the base of the mast or to the forward lower shroud.

[Bowdrie]

We can be "technical", and that changes somewhat between old usage and new usage of the language for definitions.
What we call a "bowsprit" was for a couple of centuries or more called a "Jib boom", the bowsprit being the structure that supported it at the inboard end.
The sail(s) set on a "Jib boom" were called "Jibs" and the wire they were hoisted on were called "Jibstay(s)", (duh).
Technically, any sail whose tack was at or aft of the stemhead is a "staysail", jibs being sails that are tacked ahead of the stem.
When we quit using "Topmasts" and went to a one piece "Pole mast" the wire that goes from the mast "Head" to the stem "Head" became a "Headstay".
The wire that goes from somewhere below the masthead to the stemhead is a "Forestay", the same even if its lower end is aft of the stem.
If you have more than one staysail then you can have an "inner" and an "outer" forestay.
Most of todays "Cutters" have a wire from the masthead to the outboard end of the "bowsprit", that is still a "Jibstay".
The wire from somewhere below the masthead to the stem is a "Forestay", (it stayed the foremast,) on which is set a "Forestaysail", (with just one mast we shorten that to "staysail").
On boats that have two headsails without a bowsprit they have a headstay and a forestay, (no "inner" forestay).
On boats with two headsails and a bowsprit they have a jibstay and a forestay.
If we add an additional staysail then we can refer to them as inner/outer, same with two jibs set on the jib boom.
In deference to modern coloquial language we started calling a sail set on a headstay as a jib, and the sail aft of it as a staysail, but there is no "inner forestay" unless we have more than one staysail.

[rls8r]

Bowdrie -

I grew up in a family of commercial watermen who had worked/sailed on the Chesapeake and East Coast for generations. Theirs was a world of schooners, bugeyes, pungys (my grandfather owned the Amanda F. Lewis), skipjacks, and more. I learned the names of things from them, and they followed what you described with respect to the forward parts of the boat and standing rigging.

Unfortunately, through the years I have given up on calling things what I was told that they were called. The language of boats has become so fluid that I just go with whatever who I'm talking to calls things - as long as I understand what piece they're talking about. I once had dinner with a guy who claimed to be an Olympic racing sailor who called the stays "shrouds" and the shrouds "stays." When I asked for clarification - he told me that the things varied in their names by regions of the country. I just went quiet after that. I had a guy call a main sheet the "downhaul" - explaining that when he pulled on it the boom went down. Don't get me started about the reaction folks have when I explain that the thing you walk on belowdecks is not the "floor" and that the "ceiling" is not overhead.

Don't want to hijack the thread - just wanted you to know that I appreciate the very clear explanation in your post about what to call things.

[Kijit]

We had a failure of our genoa one time. Our alternative sail was our storm sail. However, in order to put it up, we had to take down the genoa and feed the storm sail up the foil. When we re-rigged last year, we added essentially a removable Solent stay and converted the storm jib to hanks. Now we don't need to wrestle with the genoa when we need to put up some other foresail. That was the reason we added the stay.

[MicHughV]

I find the explanation above for a jib support wire thingy very well articulated. Good job !!
Made perfect sense to me....well, mostly....

Now what I'd like to see, is an equally profound description, explaining how the term " head" is used for the loo.

[markwesti]

@nuku34 , sorry that was my bad . I didn't think I had to explain what a drifter and a iner forestay is . I should not have referred to the iner forestay as "it" , and I should have referred to the drifter as "that big sail thingy with all pretty colors that attaches to the bow sprit (do I really have to explain what a bow sprit is ? . That must have all been very confusing .