Standing Rigging Question

[SailingPI]

I just started to take up sailing, a fun adventure so far. I have a question about my standing rigging. My little sailboat, 18' Renken, has a forestay and two shrouds but it does not have a backstay. The shroud connections at the boat are slightly back. What I have noticed in the couple times that I have gone out sailing is my forestay will become loose when I have the sails up. Should I be concerned, and maybe add a backstay, or is this just something that happens when you have a small sailboat?

Thank you for your help in advance and sorry if I butchered any sailing terms.

[thomm225]

If your forestay becomes loose with the sails up, you don't need a backstay.

Also, none of the 4 beach cats that I raced had backstays, and one of those also had a spinnaker.

They had a lot more sail area than your boat also.

You could tighten the shrouds more or the forestay if the looseness bothers you though.

[SailingPI]

Thank you for the information, I just wanted to check and make sure I was not missing something that I should be adding. Now I can add some creature comforts like a depth finders and cushions.

[Jim Cate]

It seems that your little boat has a fractional sloop rig with swept back spreaders. This means that the only thing keeping forestay tension up under sailing loads is tension in the shrouds. Soooo, if the stay is going slack (which adversely affects the shape of the jib), I'd suggest increasing the preload in the shrouds when you set up the rig... a bit at a time, until the forestay remains pretty straight when you are sailing to windward.

You can do this while sailing: while sailing to windward, tighten the leeward shroud a turn. This will be easy becausse it is unloaded on the lee side. Then tack and do exactly the same on the other shroud. Check forestay sag and repeat the process until the stay behaves correctly.

BTW, adding a masthead backstay won't help much... it would just induce a lot of bend in the mast... not something that you want when just learning!


She looks like a fun boat, so enjoy!

Jim

[SailingPI]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

It seems that your little boat has a fractional sloop rig with swept back spreaders. This means that the only thing keeping forestay tension up under sailing loads is tension in the shrouds. Soooo, if the stay is going slack (which adversely affects the shape of the jib), I'd suggest increasing the preload in the shrouds when you set up the rig... a bit at a time, until the forestay remains pretty straight when you are sailing to windward.

You can do this while sailing: while sailing to windward, tighten the leeward shroud a turn. This will be easy becausse it is unloaded on the lee side. Then tack and do exactly the same on the other shroud. Check forestay sag and repeat the process until the stay behaves correctly.

BTW, adding a masthead backstay won't help much... it would just induce a lot of bend in the mast... not something that you want when just learning!


She looks like a fun boat, so enjoy!

Jim

Once I get the hang of things and get out into a bigger space I may give that a shoot and see if I can tighten it up a little bit. The bonus is I have a furling jib installed so I can tighten things up if the jib gets to loose. Now that I think about it that maybe some of the reason my forestay is a little loose to start with because when I raise the furling jib I tighten it down and I bet that is taking some of the tension off the forestay.

Thanks for all the help.

[keepondancin]

I would imagine when to sheet in the mainsail the forestay tightens up. You just don’t want the mast going to far forward which could maybe cause lee helm, where the bow wants to fall off the wind. Good size boat to learn the art of sailing.

[thomm225]

On our beach cats to adjust the shrouds during boat setup, we would use the trapeze cable and put all our weight on it while someone else put the shroud swaged eye in the lowest hole it could reach on the shroud adjuster/chain plate.

Then we'd match that on the opposite side so it was even.

The forestay needs to be tight also.

This was all done on the beach before launch.

Looks like the Renken 18 uses a similar shroud adjuster/chain plate.