Fellow F-ers,
I made the switch to double spreaders a little over a year ago, and
have never looked back. As Greg said, the only time I miss it is
when I need something to hold on to when working forward of the
mast. Of course adding roller furling eliminated much of this need.
Our home stomping ground is San Francisco Bay. As you know, it can
be pretty NASTY here on a typical summer afternoon (windy and
choppy), so sail management is very important. Reefing and double
reefing are regular occurrences here.
Adding the double spreaders gives the whole rig ha a much more solid
feel. Since they were installed, we have not experienced ANY mast
inversion issues, either reefed, or double reefed (in 35-40 knots of
wind).
However, to be perfectly fair, I hadn't experienced any mast
inversion issues in the 5 years prior to adding the double spreaders
either. And this includes the infamous 1999 Double Handed
Farallones race in which we had winds above 40 knots most of the day.
Now, a little about my set-up:
My boat is a 1994 F-27, so it has the Sparcraft (Forespar?) mast
(the late model square cross sectioned one). When I purchased the
boat in 1998, it already had upper cap shrouds installed, and I
believe these make a BIG difference. I have sailed on lots of F-
27s, and have experienced the mast inversion "hula", but never on my
boat. I run my rig a little tighter then the owners manual
recommends, as per Bob Gleason's recommendation on this list back in
1999. I also have a compression strut installed.
With the double spreader added, I did find tuning the rig to be a
little different. We still set the lowers and intermediates a
little tighter. However, pre-bend requires a little more tweaking
to get it right because of the way the diamonds interact with the
intermediates. And, as others on this list have experienced, if you
have your mast pre-bend properly set with the boat unfolded, and the
cap shrouds tensioned, the mast will invert slightly when the cap
shroud tension is released. If this inversion is removed, and pre-
bend set without the cap shrouds tensioned, once tensioned properly,
you pre-bend will be about double what you want.
I still run the upper cap shrouds, along with the double spreaders,
as with a square-topped mainsail, the top 5 feet of unsupported mast
will still bend eerily off to leeward.
Hope this helps.
-Christopher Harvey
F-27 no.404 Three Sigma
http://www.sfbama.org/members/3Sigma/index.html
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