Test Sail

Our rig has always felt a little loose to us, Alexis, and other sailors that have looked at our boat.

So, after they replaced some of our running rigging for us, we got Ashley from A&A Rigging out for a test sail, on Monday morning.

We went fast and hard upwind, to load up the rig. Put some pressure on the backstays (about 1200-1400lb), and found the right running backstay tension to support the mast and stop it from pumping, without flexing it.

Repeated this on the opposite tack. Ashley, being a racing sailor (and Olympian, at that), is used to a genoa that can tack (without an inner-forestay in the way), so there was some confusion when we went about.

Ran back towards Falmouth, for running, about 800-1000lb of backstay pressure seems to be enough.

Ashley agreed that our staysail inner forestay tension was a little loose, and instructed us on tightening it. But that's a task for another day, the staysail has to come down and the furler partially disassembled, to get to the turnbuckle to tension the stay.

Navionics Track