Submitted on July 20, 2005 by Jan Willem Dorst

Question: Hi, Quick question:

I would like to use a removable furling (non reefing) gear such as the Profurl EC range as an inner forestay to deal with medium to heavy weather conditions instead of the regular forestay. Our boat is only 32 feet, so being able to remove the inner stay would be very practical when deck space is needed. And having the option of 'storing' the inner stay sail outside of the boat frees up space inside when needed.

In your opinion (or even better: in your experience), will such a gear combined with a suitably designed and constructed sail (double, low stretch luff rope) really be able to deal with the loads imposed on it and manage to keep the sail's luff tight and the sail flattened when sailing upwind?

Thanks,
Jan Willem Dorst
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Answer: Hi Jan,

The furling gear will be able to handle the loads of an inner staysail. The tough question to answer is whether you will be able to get enough headstay tension to have an effective sail for upwind sailing. If you have a very stiff mast, a position on the deck far enough forward and a 2:1 Vectran halyard with good separation from the primary headstay, then you will be happy with the headstay tension. You can use a double luff rope or a soft stay like the Future Fibers product. The latter will give better performance in terms of low stretch and less luff flutter, but it costs a lot more.

Regards,
Dan Neri

Follow-up questions:

Question 1: What is the relevance of the forward enough position on the deck? Is Dan assuming that I will be using one halyard for both the primary and 'inner' forestay? Does the angle of the inner stay influence the ability to tension it? Here's the setup I have in mind: the 'inner forestay' will have it's own dedicated 2:1 halyard. The position on the deck would be about 4 feet behind the primary forestay deck position (total distance on deck between primary forestay and mast foot is about 12 feet), similar to a cutter conguration position, but not intended to be used with both sails hoisted as in a real cutter rig. The inner forestay will run more or less parallel to the primary forestay, at the same angle in other words. Mast length above deck is approx. 37 feet. It's a masthead type rig where the halyard of the primary forestay exits the mast at the very top. The mast is extremely stiff. I will be adding running backstays to support the iner forestay.

Answer 1: The more vertical the stay is, the more force it will require to reduce the sag. So, ignoring any other issues ( like sail size, interference with other parts of the boat, location of bulkhead, cost of moving parts on the mast ) you would want to push the attachment on the deck farther forward and move the attachment on the mast further down to minimize the sag in the stay. Your setup sounds about right. The running backstay will help even though you have a very stiff rig. With out the running backstay you will probably find that the mast tends to pump as the boat develops a rhythm sailing into waves. A pumping rig allows the sail shape to change with each cycle and also leads to fatigue at rigging terminals.

Question 2: What is meant exactly by 'good separation' from the primary forestay? Does Dan simply want to emphasize that the two systems (primary and inner) must be setup in such a way that one cannot get caught in the other when hoisting and dousing the stay sail? Or is there a more specific technical point that he is trying to make?

Answer 2: Moving the stays apart at the top helps simply because, with more separation, you can apply load to the inner stay without having to simultaneously increasing the load on the forward stay. Some short-handed race boats were built in the late 80s-early 90s with two stays very close together and neither of them would ever be sufficiently tensioned because they shared the backstay load. The only way to make a "twin headstay" boat work was to have long hydraulic rams attached to each stay under the deck allowing one stay to be relaxed when the other was tensioned.

Question 3: Can you give an internet address for the Future Fibers product that Dan mentions. I am unfamiliar with it.

Answer 3: www.futurefibres.co.uk/flash/default.asp

Sorry to bother you with the additional questions. But good advice is hard to come by!

Thank you,
Jan William Dorst

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