Hello All,
Thanks for the continuing help as I enter month 2 of owning a P365 #67. We have been sailing Lola quite a bit but always with an eye to a very unpleasant appearing mizzen. The mizzen appears to have a pretty substantial roach with regular short battens. The back stays get hung up w/ the mizzen when tacking and there is a large "mae west" at the top 1/4th of the sail where it is impacted by the leeward stay. Obviously this isn't right.
The back stays appear to have original hardware. Turnbuckles with a large pelican hook clasp to a semi-circular ring fastened to the deck. I don't see how this rig would work as far as loosening and retightening as needed if you wanted to completely slacken the leeward stay???
What is your wisdom and running back stays, cutting down the sail, etc.
Thanks again,
Hop Harbeson "Lola"
The mizzen backstays are "running". The lee backstay is slacked off to allow proper sail shape while the weather backstay is tensionioned to support the mast. I bet it was funny looking all tangled up there.
My running backs had line-eating cam cleats under some blocks that appeared as a small boat vang on each side. I just had my entire mizzen re-rigged. I upped the chainplates from 1/8" x 1" width to 1/4" x 2" width on both the lowers and the uppers and then we upped the wire size for both to match. Part of it was the fact that I was adding a radar on the mizzen, and part of it was that it looked ridiculously undersized for a mast that has the potential to carry so much loading.
The final thing the rigger did was to replace those line eating blocoks for the running backs with some new Harken blocks with integral cam cleats. I'll get some pics tongiht when I am down at the boat.
By the way, for those of you who are curious, the radar, when running draws just 1.3 amps. It is the 2KW Raymarine, running of an E80 chartplotter. The combined total of chartplotter and radar draw around 4.3. I wouldn't have thought the chartplotter drew more than a transmitting radar, but it actually does.
Thanks for the good info. I have also thought that the mizzen stays looked undersized. I guess, I'll bite the bullet and get new stays with the recommended running rigging. I too, have a radar unit on the mizzen. gh