Forestay falls to leeward

[Dick Hoffman]

May be true, but....

This is true, but if you have put a furling unit on a 26 you must add a spacer to get the furling drum clear of the raised deck. The drum has to be mounted on the turnbuckle, therefore, the forstay becomes 5+ inches longer than it was intended to be. If the boat had been purchased with the furling unit from Hunter it would have come with the shorter stay...

 

[B. Leathen - bleathen@aol.com]

Is there a way to adjust the "forestay" length?

This is a very interesting thread. So my question is: is there any way to adjust the forestay length with a harken roller furling attached. I have about 4" too much rake in my 1987 H23 Wing keel mast. The previous owner installed Harken roller furling. It is fabulous, but how to I reduce the rake? Do I have to shorten the roller furling system? Are there any specs that say exactly how long the forestay should be? Thanks.

 

[Rick Engel]

harken Roller Furling

I also have a Harken system on my Hunter 26. The 1st thing you have to do is readjust your forestay. Do you have any more room on the turnbuckle for further adjustment? If not, you might have to shorten the cable, or rethread & shorten the bolts in the turnbuckle to gain that precious amount of distance to take the forward rake out of your mast.Our furling system has a coil, & thus to shorten it, I would simply cut off the upper end. However, there was some extra space on the end of the forestay that allowed the coil to slide upwards when the forestay was adjusted. In my case, I only needed another inch or so. I do not know the ratio between adjustments to the forestay & rake of the mast, but I would imagine you should not need to shorten the forestay any more than one inch to achieve 2 -4 inches of forward rake.I hope this helps.Rick