Forestay Length - Too much slack?

Hello!

I recently purchased a 1981 Hobie 16 and am currently figuring out how to rig it up (this is my first sailboat). I bought a new forestay and shrouds, which I have installed. I know that the forestay is used to keep the mast up when rigging, but slackens when you tighten the jib halyard (with the luff of the jib acting as the stay and tensioning the entire system). However, I'm thinking that I have too much slack in the forestay once the jib is tensioned. See pic below. The black curve in the middle of the sail is the slackened forestay. Is this a normal amount of slack? Even when I added a second 10 hole forestay adjuster to the other adjuster and used the shock cord trick to get the slackened forestay out of the way, it didn't even make dent. Is my new forestay too long for this old boat?

Thanks for any info!

-Ben

Your forestay looks pretty long.

The older (pre-1995) forestays were 17' 6" long.

It looks like you have a shroud for your forestay since it has a black vinyl coating. The older style shrouds were 18' 11" long.

I can't tell from the bottom of your picture as to whether that is a bridle shackle or another stay adjuster below the stay adjuster in the picture. Normally, you want your jib's headstay thimble (forestay sewn inside the luff of the jib) as low as possible.

_________________
Tim
84 H16
82 H16
87 H14T
Tortola Sails: 115222
Blue Prism Sails: 88863
Clearwater, FL

The forestay will go loose when you raise the jib. I didn't know about that when I rigged my boat the first time and thought something was wrong when I saw how slack the forestay was.

_________________
Marty
1984 H16 Yellow Nationals Redline, "Yellow Fever"
Lake Martin, 'Bama.

It's hard to tell from your picture, but I'm wondering if your mast is too vertical. Your mast should be raked backwards quite a bit and this could potentially get rid of your excess forestay. Look up mast rake and look at some pictures showing it.

Jim Clark-Dawe

Based on the picture shown in the original post, the mast is raked way too far forward. It looks like you have about a foot and a half of space between the jib clew plate and the front crossbar. This distance should only be a couple inches, even on older boats. I would rake the mast back as far as you can with the shroud adjusters and go from there.

The forestay may also be too long for your boat. I believe Hobie lengthened it at some point for newer boats, but there is a shorter version for older boats. Do a search for “Hobie Wire Guide” and it should pop up. You can check your forestay length against Hobie’s recommended length.

I think you will want to get this resolved because with the rigging that loose, I could see the potential for the mast to jump out of the step while you’re moving the boat around, before the jib has been raised.

sm

Thanks for the responses! This is really helpful!