Rig Tension

Oh and as an aside I sailed a brand new Supernova on Sunday. His rig was 'Blaze floppy' but seemed to work fine aside from a complete lack of feel from the mainsheet.

Floppy rigged boats are a compromisein order to get things working upwind as well as down. Firefly - floppy rigged, no shroud adjustment allowed on the water. The sails are cut to suit this style of sailing. Albacore -  loads of rig tension, but you can let it off to bring the mast upright going offwind. I imagine that Applecore sailmakers have a different brief to Hydes with the Firefly.

On many modern Merlins you have the shrouds, jib tension, kickers and lowers linked so that only one string needs to be adjusted when you want to rake the rig.

Flying the spinnaker does not increase the workload except as it is launched when the puller and pole downhaul are pulled on before/after - no adjustment needed. I suppose you may want to adjust the pole height but most would set this before a race and leave it.

Rig tension is normally set so that the leeward shroud does not pant on a beat - no idea what loading as have never bothered to measure it.

Originally posted by Daniel Holman What about the constructional creep? I.e. bedding in of the braiding? Even the pre stretched 78 max bedded in loads the first time it was used and even with massive bury - don't think they were bad splices.

Pre-stretch after splicing.

78 did have a large amount of creep, 90 was a great deal better.

For example I did some testing with Lasers race kits. On the first part of the vang I spliced two strops same length (1200mm, I think) one in 2.5mm SK78 the other in 2.5mm SK90. I think both ropes were made by FSE.

After 20-25 minutes sail testing in 20 knots wind the SK78 strop had stretched 70mm the SK90 just 7mm.

When I made the same component in SK90 and hung a 20kg weight on it over night after sail testing there was no stretch/creep.

I am making up a new set of rigging for my Merlin including getting Stu West (west engineering- http://www.westengineeringltd.co.uk ) to make me some T5 end fittings that slot into standard spreaders.

I am going to go with a two part shroud, like on a yacht. One part deck to spreader, next part spreader to Hounds at the mast.

Originally posted by gordon1277 Hi NHRC I just took the dyneema shrouds of my Phantom based on the comment from a rigger that although most of the reference to UV issues was incorrect he was more worried about abrasion from grit, as my boat is in the compound at Lee with SW salt water and sand in the breeze I thought it best to swap to wire. What are your thoughts on this? Also dyneema shrouds hum under load in a breeze and it can be distracting but you can tell the tension by the note.