How to attach a Flag & Pendant to the Aft Stay and be able to raise or lower it from the cockpit of a Newport 30 MK 2 with a Bimini?
Using the aft stay
- Thread starter wostenberg
- Start date
There all lots of boats I've sailed on that had a topping lift spliced into the backstay. I don't remember the details of the splice but I think it was ss wire laid into the ss backstay. Many years of service - I can't recall a failure. I don't see why a block couldn't attached to such a wire and a flag run up and down it. I would observe tradition and lower the flag at sunset and not deploy it in wind over 18 knots.
Here's what I did on my '85 Hunter 34. It has a split backstay although a similar approach could be done for a single backstay that passes through a Bimini. There is a triangular plate of stainless that divides the single backstay down from the mast. I threaded that through my Davis radar reflector for the height. At one of the legs on the backstay, I replaced the cotter pin with a cotter ring through the clevis pin. I attached a very small block on that ring. Down near the botttom of the backstay is where I clamped on an Aladdin cable cleat. It has a small hole in it. My flag halyard was a very small diameter piece of line that I installed two brass clips for my flag at the correct spacing. The halyard then was fed through the block, the starboard boot on top of the Bimini cover and the hole in the cleat forming a continuous loop. I tied the two ends together. Raising and lowering the flag from the cockpit was a simple matter of putting the flag on the clips and rotating the halyard through the Bimini hole to the desired height. Lowering it was the reverse. It came back through the Bimini without a problem. You might be able to see all of this on my photos if you can zoom in enough.
