[allene]

This is probably asked 100 times but perhaps not this way. I have a wood mast (spruce box 5x7 at cabin top made of 1x and 40.5 off the deck, keel stepped). The boat is an L-36. The forestay is 1/4 inch wire and the boat has a new mast step with 5 new floors and is solid. I race a guy with a L-36 with an aluminum mast and know I cannot match his forestay tension, which is very high. He always beats me (I get 2nd) and he told me this is one of the reasons although there are many. I was advised by my sail maker to set the forestay to 18% of the breaking strength or 1300 pounds and bought a PT2. But I get a lot of forestay sag. I don't want to just crank things tighter and hurt my rig. Because the backstay tension was less than 1/2 the forestay tension and I calculated it should be 2/3, I questioned the accuracy of my gauge.

I bought a PT3 which is also calibrated for 1/4 wire. Both the PT2 and PT3 are rated at 3% accurate but I saw a 26% difference between them when measuring the same tension. I bought another PT2 and it read the same as mine. Loos has been helpful and is going to calibrate my gauge but I got to thinking I could measure the tension by pulling on the forestay itself. So, I pulled on it with 41 pounds, observed a 2.4 inches deflection and calculated 825 pounds of tension. This at a setting where the PT2 said 2000 pounds and the PT3 said 1250. I don't know what to believe.

The bottom line is I think I need more forestay tension but I don't want to hurt my mast.

I can provide more detail on any of this if asked.

What should I do?

Allen