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Ed Huntress Ed Huntress is offline
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Default Anybody have a spare cable tension gauge?

On Sat, 11 Oct 2014 18:57:08 -0500, Richard
wrote:

On 10/11/2014 2:29 PM, tdacon wrote:
"Gunner Asch" wrote in message
...

Im looking for a wire cable "tension gauge" to use for adjusting
rigging tension on my sailboats.


Gunner

Gunner, on boats of that size a tension gauge is overkill. Just set them
up initially by hand until they "feel right". Then take it for a sail
and sail it close-hauled first on one tack and then the other and adjust
things until the mast stands in column and the jib luff isn't overly
scalloped (you'll never get it perfectly straight). It doesn't take long
to develop the feel. To get the mast standing perpendicular to the deck,
hoist the end of a long measuring tape to the masthead and measure the
distances to port and starboard chain plates and adjust as necessary. To
adjust the rake of the mast, just use that measuring tape as a plumb
bob, and adjust headstay and backstay tension until it has the rake you
want (usually a little aft).

...says a guy who's done it that way on every boat he's ever tuned, over
forty years, up to boats in the forty- to fifty-foot range.

Tom



But on these smaller boats, the mast might not be perpendicular.
Or even straight, for that matter.
Depends on how the rig was designed and how sail is cut.

Big boats have telephone pole masts that generally stand straight -
even if raked.

Small boat masts often are curved a bit to start with, and the backstay
tensioned to belly the middle of the mast forward and reduce the depth
of the sail. Nice in heavy air. Or un-tensioned (if that's a real
word) to fatten the sail for light air.

So the trick is to set the stay tensions the way the designer intended
them to be to get the mast pre-shaped.

That is done more accurately with a tension gage.

But them it's Gunner. So ...


A couple of things: First, consistent race winners in small boats
often win because they *ignore* what the designer intended, and
instead shape everything in a way they know is more likely to win.
That's one reason they're winners. In small boats with a lot of sail,
it often means slacking off from the nominal values.

Secondly, unless I'm mistaken, Gunner is sailing small boats that
weren't especially stiff to begin with, and probably, as a result of
age and stress, have hulls like rubber. I remember he had a FJ. I
sailed FJs a lot. Three years, and they're done for in serious racing.
International 14s are even worse -- two years, maybe. Getting fussy
about setting the tension of standing rigging in such boats is an
exercise in futility.

Now, I've been out of it for a long time, so tell me if I'm off base.

(BTW, I talked on the phone with Derrick Fries a few weeks ago. We
sailed together at MSU. Remember him?)

--
Ed Huntress