Furling Head Stay Tension

Tally Ho · May 26, 2023

I am not sure if that rig is a B&R rig or not (no backstay?).

Tightening the rig is not a trivial thing and if you don’t have any experience with doing it, it might be worthwhile to hire a rigger to inspect and tune it. Pay attention to what he does, how he checks it, etc and you may be able to “maintain” it in the future.

If a traditional rig, you can also tighten the head stay by tightening the back stay. But all of the shrouds probably need to be adjusted too, and you could change the degree of mast rake, so you need to aware of that…like I said, not a trivial thing to adjust.

My O’Day 322 has a simple rig, and I borrowed a Loos gauge to check the tension on the shrouds and stays. Tension is a function of the size of the wire.

Greg

Joe · May 26, 2023

Tightening the forestay will pull the mast forward changing the rake (which is the fore and aft lean of the mast) Sailboatdata.com indicates that your boat has a B&R rig... which means no backstay. SO..... get your owner's manual out and address the problem. It will tell you how to set the rake of your mast, using the forestay and the back sweeping shrouds, and during the process set the forestay for adequate tension. . If you don't have an appetite for learning about this, I would take Tally Ho's suggestion and hire a rigger to come out and get your boat squared away.

shemandr · May 27, 2023

Selden has a tuning guide for the B&R rig. Somewhere on one of my computers I have it. I will search for it but it should be easily found on the internet.
It is not just a matter of tightening the forestay. The length of the forestay sets the rake of the mast which has a lot to do with the balance of the helm. Too little rake and you won't feel the helm. Too much and you'll be dragging the rudder thru the water.
You can get more forestay tension by tightening the cap shrouds. Try a few turns and count how many. Do the same on each side. Since they go to near the masthead (It's been 5 years since my Hunter 356 and I've forgotten if they actually go to the masthead), when you tighten them you may induce bend in the mast. That can be good if the main is cut for that and if you don't have in mast furling. Otherwise you may need to tighten the lowers to straighten the mast a bit. Write down the changes you make so you can reverse them if performance isn't improved.
With the B&R rig if you need to mess with the diagonals, for me, it is time to bring in a professional rigger who knows the B&R rig. I've read that the tuning is normally done with the mast off the boat. You can imagine that tuning from a bosons chair would be a lot of up and down. And I can't imagine trying to hit target tensions while hanging from the mast.

shemandr · May 27, 2023

http://www.riggingandsails.com/pdf/selden-tuning.pdf

This was posted by another forum member RichH, who doesn't post any longer to our loss.
You can also search the forums for "Boat rounds up in a puff.." to see the whole thread.

shemandr · May 29, 2023

I think the starting point is to make sure the spar is centered port to starboard by hoisting a tape measure to the masthead and measuring to the same place on the deck on both sides. Obviously this needs to be done in calm winds. Then sight up the mast to try to detect any sideways bulges in the mast. You may be able to use the lower stays to remove that. Then tighten the cap shrouds to see if you can get more forestay tension. After each adjustment you should sight up the mast to see if anything untoward has happened. If you keep a record of the adjustments and sequence you can always go back.
Too much rake is toward the stern (Longer headstay).
I don't understand the question about the Loos gauge. It is helpful to measure tension of the various wires in comparison to the rated working load for that diameter wire. At some point you may notice that the tension isn't increasing much more as you tighten a particular wire. At that point you may be bending the boat rather than increasing tension on the wire.
The B&R rig will not have a bar tight forestay like the masthead rigs of the 70's with backstay adjusters (Even those had a catenary). If the foresail is cut to match the forestay bend in either rig that is optimal. In lighter air the B&R probably can't point as high as a masthead. But the large main will provide power and tend to push the bow up a bit too. The tendency is for the B&R sailer to want to trim the sails and especially the jib tighter. Trimming the jib too tight is a speed killer. Accept that the B&R gives something up to the masthead in pointing and try to keep boat speed up.

Tally Ho · May 31, 2023

Mclovin said:
Was down sailing this past weekend and took this video. I have not adjusted anything yet but will next time. Done a tone of reading and looking into you suggest. Curious what you think.

No video…

Screen Saver · Jun 2, 2023

Im not sure how different yours is to the H49 I have. But it seems similar. I took a long time to get mine even nearly right and many so-called riggers came. This area is my weakest on boats but what I have learnt is yes unless your very confident its worth getting someone in. Also most riggers have no idea about a B&R Fractional rigg, so generally unless they know this particular type of rig, you will waste your money. Probably more than 50% of boats these days have there rake wrong, simply because they tend to load the boat up with all sorts of shit in the transom so the stern drops and the rake becomes out unless you counter this by adjustments to the rig. In my case solar pannels davits etc dropped the stern creating this problem. Adjusting the forestay is not that difficult. The Seldon manual will tell you the sag ( I think if memory serves mine is 13" max). Hard to measure this of course. I ran a dyneme line down beside the forestay with a 10" cable tie sticking out horizontal halfway down. If there is to much sag, then it implies the cap shrouds and forestay are out of balance ie too lose, so cranking up the forestay turnbuckle is easy and if you follow the instructions other than upsetting the rake you are unlikely to cause any negative issues, assuming you dont try to take the sag all the way out when its loaded, and make sure you don't invert the prebend. I would not touch the diagonals unless your very confident. The Cap's and forestay are not a problem. But always count turns, so you can put it back, and what you do to port you should also do to starboard assuming the mast was vertical and straight. The tensioning tool (Loose) is of no use on H49 it doesn't go big enough. Selden will tell you to use the stretch measurement to guage the tension. There is a formular for x wire gauge stretch per meter. A laser pointer or measuring tool and a lot of patience you can do it. My rig also had to much prebend, and it was in that state too long and while better than it was, it's still not right. Hope that helps

Screen Saver · Jun 3, 2023

Yes I would say looking at it, it has too much bend. I also note that the halyard is not properly tensioned as the sail is gathered at a few spots. It would also appear that the sheet track is pulling back more than down as the foot seems quite straight compared to the rest of the sail. Perhaps this is more appearance than factual due it being partly furled. Assuming the mast prebend is positive and not 0 or inverted, I would take up two turns on the forestay, and I would be surprised if the Cap are not to lose. But anything more complicated I would look for an expert, who has experence with B&R Fractional.