38 PROFESSIONAL BOATBUILDERDETAILS: From the Shows- Why doesn’t the angle of the strap bolted to the
transom line up with the angle of the stay? e end of the
strap should t nicely into the throat of the clevis at the
lower end of the hydraulic cylinder. If it did, the two per-
forated lengths of stainless steel strap, which aren’t parallel,
would not be necessary. Perhaps the bottom of the cylinder
(at the red arrow) rubbed against the deck’s corner and had
to be raised. Whatever the reason, why not just fabricate a
longer mounting strap as an attachment point and align it
properly? - Oh no! e standing rigging’s starboard backstay
cable was too short. Adding another turnbuckle bought
the builder some length, but the solution is far from ele-
gant. I liked that the stay’s foundation was precisely
aligned, but I wondered, “Is this what the builder chose to
represent their standing rigging skills at a boat show?”- For a new boat like this one, I was taught that no
more than about half the travel in the standing rigging’s
turnbuckle should be used up, leaving room for further
shortening to compensate for stretch in the wire, which
inevitably occurs with use. ere is no more room for
adjustment here. What’s going to happen next season? - In this example, the backstay wire was too long, and
a correctly sized turnbuckle would have been too long to t
between the cable termination and the eye, so a short length
of braided line had been installed to keep the stay visibly
taut at the dock—obviously a temporary measure. But the
alignment of the stay and tang with the rigging angle will
still catch my eye even a er the stay length is corrected.
12.Rigging
11.Standing and running rigging on sailboats is inherently interesting to me
because it traces the load paths that the forces of masts and sails follow into a
boat’s hull structure. Most of those loads are in tension, which is best transferred
through straight load paths. Perhaps that’s why stays that do not line up with their
attachment points catch my eye. When I see them I wonder how much more time
and e ort it would have taken to line everything up.Pfund-Details171-ADFinalr.indd 38 1/2/18 2:19 PM