Shroud Placement

[kydocfrog]

I may be about to display some gaff rig ignorance here, but in my defense I will restate that my last significant boat was gaff rigged New England cat. She was fine sailor, weather helm that tear your arms out, pound in a chop all that...but...she would go dead downwind like a banshee, even in light air. Wing that big old main boom out, tinker with the peak halyard, and stay wide awake. She had an unstayed mast, set in the eyes as expected. That leads to my question.

I kind of eyeballing things last night while I should have been mixing epoxy, and I started looking a the shroud placement. I thought they were wrong at first, but I measured them, and nope, they are right. As near as I can figure, with the shrouds rigged, the main boom is going to be free to move no more than maybe 45 to max 50 degrees off the center line. That's hardly past a broad reach... If you can't boom out or set wing and wing, how do you run this thing hard downwind, particularly in light air?

Has anybody tinkered with the shroud placement? Or do I just not understand something about a gaff rig with a stayed mast?

[Frank Hagan]

The shrouds on the Weekender do interfere with going wing and wing; it may be more than 45

[John B]

As a general rule, you can have the shrouds further forward but at some point you lose the aft staying of the mast .Then you have to compensate by having running backstays. Which you probably don't want .

Because I'm a big wuss, I rigged aft lowers, another shroud coming even further back than the lowers( swifters), running backstays to the masthead and checkstays to the spreaders. This is all on a gaff keel boat 41 ft long. What I find is that by the time the boom is close to the shrouds, the gaff is pretty much square off anyway .For 2 reasons you don't want it to go further. 1 . any part of the main sail forward of the mast will tend to induce rolling in the boat.2. the gaff shouldn't hit the spreaders( if you have them) because that can wring the mast.

But you're right... in the light I'd like that big sail to blade right on out there. compromise I suppose.