forestay tension

[Tim Cox]

How tight should I pull the tension on the forestay for my Tangaroa.  The side stays are on lanyards, the forestay on a bottlescrew.  My idea was to pull it very tight, to aid pointing up, but will this overstress the lanyards?    Cheers Tim.

[boatsmith]

On many older Wharrams the beam attachments are such that the hulls and beams will move quite a bit. This makes a taut headstay pretty difficult to achieve. For better pointing with a headstay with lots of sag in it your jib must be cut to allow for this sag. You can also add running backstays which will allow you to tighten the headstay more. In the newer lased beams the beam to hull attachment can be made pretty tight. It is still difficult to control headstay tension because of the angle of the shrouds versus the headstay. I believe that running backs would help most Wharrams point better.
Many people do not like running backstays because it is one more string to pull and release when tacking.
But if you have ever raced on a fractionally rigged boat that has them you can certainly see how much help they are in controlling the headstay tension and so the jib shape. Just my thoughts. I will try and go out on the lake this weekend and put some temporary runners on my Tiki 30 and compare my tacking angles with the gps with and without runners.

[Ann and Neville Clement]

On Peace we first tighten the crossbeam lashings, then release the tension in all the shrouds and the sprit to bow wires. Then we put a heavy person on the end of the sprit to bend it down and tighten the sprit to bow wires. Then we tighten the forestay and finally we tighten the shrouds taking care to keep the masts centered in the mast cases. We then revisit each knot we tied and place frapping turns in the same sequence and it all gets a whole lot tighter that way. Admittedly we do not race and we do prefer sailing on a reach or with a quartering wind, but we are impressed with the tightness we are able to achieve with just ropes tied carefully. Perhaps somebody with pics of Peace or another pic of frapping turns will illustrate what I am talking about. We have no camera. But this sequence of tightening made a big difference on Peace. We find that using a smaller diameter line for the frapping turns makes them easier to tie. Running backstays would drive us nuts, but we do not race and prefer reaching and quartering winds so much more than beating to windward, we are happy to wait for them.

Ann and Nev

[kim whitmyre]

I use Makz of Phuket's method of tieing off the halyards to the stems, both fore and aft in turn, and putting a frapping line onto the halyards. Pull the frapping line tight on the halyards and you can get the forestay and shrouds very tight!

Re the running backs, Glenn Tieman mentioned using them on his first voyage across the Pacific in the Pahi 26, Kestrel. He used them for running downwind wing and wing. He would actually raise the main forward of the shrouds! He did say they were a pain in the ass, something he would only use on long tradewind tacks.