rigging question

d212 · #1 (**permalink**) 08-14-2007

i crewed on a farr 39 lastweekend and the boat had this flimsy backstay. it had a flexible rod at the top which i think takes up the slack when you dont have the backstay on. it had runners and the skipper talked about the mast falling down if the runners were used incorrectly. would somebody please give me a little more detail on this setup?

sailingdog · #2 (**permalink**) 08-15-2007

the rod is designed to allow the backstay to clear a mainsail that has a very large roach... otherwise the mainsail would catch on the backstay at every tack and gybe. This is fairly typical of a racing mainsail design, where the full batten large roach main is used to get more sail area for a given mast height and boom length.

jboatjack · #3 (**permalink**) 09-02-2007

the skipper talked about the mast falling down if the runners were used incorrectly depends on how much wind.