Submitted on January 23, 2006 by Russ Irwin

Question: Dear Veronica -

Dan's answer to my earlier question was helpful. Dan should be happy to know that we're well into the design and the boat should power at 8.5 knots, have room for an 11' RIB and has a hard dodger with great lumbar support on the seats for standing watch. That said, I have a couple of follow up questions:

1) Based on your comments on leaving a soft stayed sail permanently rigged, I assume that the G-0 will only be raised when needed. For the sake of convenience, if I was to rig two forestays, fore and aft of each other, one with a 150% genoa (forward) and one with the 97% jib (aft), how far aft would the jib stay need to be set to avoid most of the turbulence from the furled genoa?

2) If I stay with the configuration you've recommended, what would be the sail configuration progression, upwind and downwind as the wind moves from 5 knots to 40 knots?

Thanks,
Russ

Answer: Hi Russ,

Twin headstays present problems of interference with each other. The lazy stay creates windage which will compromise the performance of the active stay to some extent. That interference is hard to measure but I think it is safe to say, the farther apart the two stays are, the better. Tacking the forward sail is obviously a problem with an inner stay in the way. Another problem that is not so obvious on paper is that when you have two headstays, the lazy stay is always sharing the rig tension with the active stay. What that means is that your active stay will have much more sag than it would in the absence of the other stay. Open class race boats sometimes address this problem by installing under the deck hydraulic rams. The rams are like back stay adjusters and they allow you to slacken the lazy stay and tighten the active stay. These rigs are complicated and more difficult to tune and maintain than a conventional rig with one fixed headstay and an adjustable backstay. They also require holes in the foredeck, which inevitably means water in the living area. Finally, the second stay with a furled up sail and furling gear will represent an additional 200 lbs aloft and forward of the boats pitching center. As you might have guessed by now, I am not a big advocate of twin fixed headstays. You will see some boats with this setup but most will be larger than 50'.

Regards,
Dan Neri

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