wire size

[charrette]

thanks for the reply,

i don't believe it is a discontinuous rig.

the rig is similar if not the same as the hunter 37 in your video "tuning your rig". it is a conventional fractional rig with aft swept spreaders. i don't believe it is a b&r rig. the upper shrouds go up over the both sets of spreaders and terminate on the mast in line with the headstay. the intermediates go up over the lower sreaders and terminate at the mast/upper spreader attachment. the lowers terminate at the mast/lower spreader attachment.

i had the rig tuned by a local rigger and since then the boat has sailed with weather helm on a starboard tack and no helm on a port tack at 10 -12 knots of wind. i decided to do some research on rig tuning, buy a loos wire tension gauge and tackle the job myself. what i found was the mast was not square to the boat. it leaned to the port side and the tension in the shrouds were minimal and uneven. on average the uppers were at about 10% of the breaking strength, the intermediates were at 9% and the lowers were at 5%. when sailing the leeward shrouds were very slack.

i have read that a fractional rig with aft swept spreaders should have tight upper shrouds (20% of the breaking strength no higher than 25%) in order to keep the headstay from stagging too much. where as the intermediates and lowers are to be just enough to keep the mast straight without being too slack to leeward.

without going all out i increased the tension in the shrouds and set them equal and took the boat out for a sail and it performed better with better balance but not completely balanced. so then i started from scratch and set the mast square to the boat, set the rake and prebend, and tensioned the shrouds. i won't be able to sail it until this weekend to see how it worked and do some final tweaking.