Hi all, I am pondering removing the inner forestay on our 1981 Hunter Cherubini 37, simply to make tacking easier and give more room on the foredeck. Is there a structural reason that removing the inner forestay is a bad idea? Is it an integral part of the standing rigging? Could removing it cause the mast to buckle in strong wind?
You may be asking: why remove it? In the past 8 years of owning the boat we used the staysail only a few times early on to try it out, but have never found it very useful. Perhaps I'll face some criticism for not using the staysail more, and perhaps we simply are not 'salty' enough, but we sail mostly in summertime light wind in the Gulf Islands (inner south coast of BC, Canada), and we find it simpler and easier to primarily use our ~110% genoa on rolling furler and reef that as required if the winds picks up. A few years ago we removed the staysail boom to make more room on the forward deck and we don't miss it at all. There are two reasons we don't like the inner forestay. One is that it makes tacking with the genoa a royal pain. More than half the time the genoa simply wraps itself around the inner forestay instead of laying over on the new tack, and one of us has to run forward and help detangle the sail and/or sheets and move it over manually, a process that is both irritating and at times dangerous in moderate wind. The second reason is we like to stow our dingy on the foredeck for extended sails. Our current dingy just fits between the mast and the inner forestay, but we're looking at a new one that is slightly longer and won't fit in that space.
Being that I'm somewhat adverse to commitment, I was thinking of starting by detaching the inner forestay from the deck and securing it at the mast in some way to prevent halyard slapping issues, but leave the top attachment and deck hardware in place so it would be relatively simple to reattach if we for some reason regret the decision and want our inner forestay back.
I've attached an image with the forestay we are considering removing highlighted in yellow, just for clarity.
Any thoughts or advice appreciated!
- John
You may be asking: why remove it? In the past 8 years of owning the boat we used the staysail only a few times early on to try it out, but have never found it very useful. Perhaps I'll face some criticism for not using the staysail more, and perhaps we simply are not 'salty' enough, but we sail mostly in summertime light wind in the Gulf Islands (inner south coast of BC, Canada), and we find it simpler and easier to primarily use our ~110% genoa on rolling furler and reef that as required if the winds picks up. A few years ago we removed the staysail boom to make more room on the forward deck and we don't miss it at all. There are two reasons we don't like the inner forestay. One is that it makes tacking with the genoa a royal pain. More than half the time the genoa simply wraps itself around the inner forestay instead of laying over on the new tack, and one of us has to run forward and help detangle the sail and/or sheets and move it over manually, a process that is both irritating and at times dangerous in moderate wind. The second reason is we like to stow our dingy on the foredeck for extended sails. Our current dingy just fits between the mast and the inner forestay, but we're looking at a new one that is slightly longer and won't fit in that space.
Being that I'm somewhat adverse to commitment, I was thinking of starting by detaching the inner forestay from the deck and securing it at the mast in some way to prevent halyard slapping issues, but leave the top attachment and deck hardware in place so it would be relatively simple to reattach if we for some reason regret the decision and want our inner forestay back.
I've attached an image with the forestay we are considering removing highlighted in yellow, just for clarity.
Any thoughts or advice appreciated!
- John
