A couple of heavy air rigging tips for noodle rigs. A little prep on these before you leave could pay dividends.
1. When sailing offwind in breeze, there is enormous load on the vang. With the boom squared off, this puts huge sideways load on the mast at the gooseneck - the vang is essentially trying to propel the boom right through the mast, and will be pushing it out of column here in a nasty way. The spinnaker pole will be doing exactly the same a bit further up, but in the opposite direction. The resulting S-bend is not a sight for the faint-hearted.
When Drum lost her bullet-proof Whitbread spar as she rolled over keel-less in the 85 Fastnet, she was re-rigged with her 'spare' mast, an inshore 4-spreader noodle from the maxi Xargo. Apart from a pair of temporary chicken stays out to the rail mid-foredeck to counter spin pole loads, she was rigged with a pair of temporary gooseneck-stays out to the chainplates. To further reduce the problem, a big webbing strop was run over the boom and via a 3:1 tackle back to a winch to act as a sort of vertical vang.
See the famous Rick Tomlinson photos of Drum surfing under poled-out jibtop in the Southern Ocean in 86 and you can spot all these bits. The rig stayed up all round the planet, and across the Atlantic twice afterwards too.
2. Next, runners and checkstays. Prebend is always good, but for your trip, not too much (perhaps 'one section's worth'), otherwise the runner loads become large. She IS a masthead, right? Worst of all is negative bend, i.e. runners on, and backstay off. Inverting the rig will very likely bring it down, or at least weaken it badly. So you need to be smart on the runners upwind. Less so downhill, as the mast will be a bit straighter with the backstay half off.
3. Gybing in very heavy air with two reefs in is also a big problem with the runners. This can be significantly helped if the headboard, when you have two reefs in, is at least a foot below the runner position on the mast, which is probably will be. You can then disconnect the checkstays from the runner block - change their attachment here to a big snapshackle - and set them up with a 4:1 tackle out to the rail. You can then set up both runners as you run downwind, and when you gybe, the main passes safely across below them both. All you have to deal with is the checkstays, which are far less loaded. This really adds peace of mind.
4. Use the babystay to reduce mast pumping in a seaway. And if you have a removeable inner forestay, use that too when pounding in a breeze.
5. When poling out a jibtop, rig a separate pole guy as well. Makes it so much easier to set up, and especially to gybe the jib off the pole if you have an emergency, as the sail still has two sheets (and two aftguys) on the clew, and the pole doesn't go flying around. Again, see the Drum photo.
Errr.... more later, and all IMHO, of course. But a good 80's style rigger who remembers all this will be a big help.
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