Why slack rigging

Ive not seen a normal D on a Solo for years. I would imagine the gold masts are Ds and Cs not seen a B but i bet they were used too.

Both my Fireflys were fitted with rotating masts, the fastest setup was to have the forestay slack enough that the mainsheet could be block to block upwind. For downwind, there was a jib tensioner to pull the rig forward and tighter the jib luff.
If one forgot to release this upwind, the boat was significantly slower.

As Rupert states, the Reynold masts needed tight diamondstays - the section as too thin to be self supporting downwind (remember that the mast rotated).
The later Proctor masts were more robust, nowadays, the mast is fixed with spreadrs, so it's a different setup.

With regard to the Solo,one of the effects of slack rigging is that the mast can sag a bit to leeward, tending to open the leech upwind. With the fully battened sail, I suspect it is too easy to hook the leech.

Colin

Till the mast crumples like spaghetti!

Having floppy rigging enables the rig to act a little bit like a racing windsurfer rig, i.e back for upwind and forward for off wind, it also helps in light wind enabling soft sails to heel and keep shape without having to heel the boat on hulls that don't like to be heeled.

On Firefly Reynolds masts (the ones with the wooden top) diamonds were tight, but shrouds loose. The mast rotated, so tight shrouds would have prevented that happening easily. Once the rotating Proctor mast came out, they were so stiff, even the diamonds became slack.

Edited by Rupert - 07 Feb 17 at 10:16am