Remove Lower Shrouds?

[happypagan]

I have a 1977 Helms 30. The boat has a rather beefy 7x4" 40' mast with 1 upper shroud per side and 2 lower shrouds per side.

When flying spinnaker with pole, the forward lower shrouds severely limit the swing of the pole. This is no big deal on most days, but when wind is strong, setting the spinnaker at this near 30 degree angle can really be overpowering and can bring us close to broach.

I am trying to make an educated calculated decision on removing these two shrouds and attaching them to the same chainplate as the uppers to allow full sweep of the pole.
This main chainplate already has an extra mounting hole in it; the new location would make the two forward lowers be on the mast centerline as viewed abeam.

I would lose the ability to place any bend in the mast, but it is so thick that this has never really been possible anyway. My main concern is safety and damage to equipment.

So is this going to cause a dismasting or are these two shrouds located forward merely to control mast bend?

[Brion Toss]

Hello,
The fore-and-aft sweep of the lower shrouds locates the mast in that plane, bend or no, and deals with the cyclic as well as standing force there. With your mast, moving the forward mast to athwartships wouldn't affect bend ó there isn't any ó but you would be leaving the aft lowers' pull unopposed, and this would induce bend, and not the good kind. Early Baba's had the arrangement you are proposing, and they all had inverted masts, which contributed to weather helm. They also had aft-led intermediates to make matters even worse, but that was just gravy.
Lots of boats have more sweep aft than forward, making for a slightly less problematic arrangement, but not by much.
Therefore, you might consider losing the aft lower as well, and just having an athwartships lower. It would have to be heavier wire, so we need to know if the chainplate is up to the challenge. Likewise you'd probably need to change the upper tang. Run the numbers on this. If they look good, you'll have the solution.
Fair leads,
Brion Toss

[osteoderm]

Another arrangement to consider: a a single babystay on the centreline to replace the forward lowers. I've seen this on some beefy C&C rigs in our yard.