[Jeff_H]

The collection of winches up by the mast are a classic IOR era winch farm. Before the days of rope clutches, race boats had large collections of winches mounted on the deck up by the mast to handle the halyards. While its hard to say for certain, the winches aft were probably used for the mainsheet at one time or perhaps to handle the traveller.

Without knowing more about the weight and design of the extra staysails, but guessing from the age of the boat, I would suggest that these staysails, as you call them, were either intended to be flown from the forestay in lieu of the genoa. IOR era boats like yours typically carried a wide sellection of jibs and genoras which would have included a working jib, number 1, 2 and 3 genoas. These would have had hanks or else been flown in the lufftrack. IOR boats of that era also carried lighter weight staysails intended to be flown on thier own luff wires. These might have included bloopers, drifters, reachers and spinnaker staysails. Bloopers and spinnaker staysails were flown when the chute was up. Drifters and reachers were flown in very light air. All were sheeted to snatch blocks that would be attached into the punched aluminum toe rails of that era.

I would doubt that any of the staysails that you have are meant as heavy weather sails and if they were I seriously doubt that they would have been taken to a track on the foredeck. That track is probably for the spinnacker pole downhaul.

Respectfully,
Jeff