Double headsail / asym off a bowsprit

[deckhand]

Wow, this forum started just in time. I finished drawing up some plans, and was about to post them in another section when I noticed this one. perfect.


There are more comments about it on the site post.

[keelbolts]

I have twin forestays on Favona and occassionally run two headsails. I love it. Easy to control and I already have the sails. I'll run my genny off of one side & my working jib off the other. She'll sail herself even though the sails don't match. When I really want to get fancy, I'll use my spinnacker pole with the genny & drop the main & sheet the working jib thru a snatchblock on attached to the boom. Given a choice, and the fact that I don't want to work at sailing all that much, I'd much rather have twins than an asym drifter.

[Rachel]

Jeff,

How do you keep both the forestays tensioned properly? Are they fore-and-aft oriented, or ?

I sailed on a boat that had twin forestays (at first) and with only one jib up (i.e. not runnning) the empty stay would be tight and the loaded stay would let the luff get really "baggy." The twins came down to a fitting that "converted" them into one which then attached to the cranse iron.

With the limitations on tensioning wire, etc., we couldn't seem to avoid the problem, and we went to a single headstay.

Maybe we missed something? Twins sure would be handy.

Rachel

[deckhand]

I was hoping to make my "red" sail a removable asym spinnaker via the cdi spinnaker furler. The orange sail would be my current roller genny and the green would be a storm inner forestay (though it's going to take some interesting dinghy design). I was nervous about the spinnaker idea too but my friend jack has pretty much convinced me that its a good move. I also like that it sets up off a halyard instead of a permanent stay.

When I was making up my plans I noticed that my mast is almost dead center of the boat. Strange for a sloop, no?