Whisker stay tension

[thuss]

I used the riggers apprentice book and video and a Loos tension guage to tune the rig on our Hans Christian 38. So far so good, however, what amount of tension is recommended for whisker stays, I went with 10% of wire strength but I thought it would be good to verify that.

Thanks,
Todd

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[Brion Toss]

Hi,
First of all, you need whiskers to have whisker stays; spreaders on the bowsprit shouds give you the right to use this wonderfully salty term. So, for your bowsprit shrouds, there's probably no harm in tuning them to 10%, but these wires are extremely short, so the elasticity that tuning is meant to deal with simply isn't there to any great degree. Added to that, bowsprit shrouds are typically way oversized, relative to the load that comes on them. So unless they are very light and very long, just get the slack out of them. If you see the leeward one gone slack when beating in a breeze, tighten a bit more.
Fair leads,
Brion Toss