Hammocks and stress on standing rigging

[Ian McColgin]

You can calculate the added tension on the stays from stay length, deflection, weight and what you remember of the parallelogram of force. That's really not going to hurt the stay, but if you go out of your way to make it a sharp bend point curve in the same place every time, that could become an issue. On my schooners - boats with stays unlike my current catboat - I had some sort of halyard along each stay to hold the thing up and I always led lines as far forward and aft to the rail to reduce the stress on the stays, really just for good measure.