Vincent DePillis

Ed can't his cake and eat it too.

The upside of SA is that it is beholden to no organization.  It can be irresponsible, impolitic, juvenile, rude and honest.  This is a useful role.

But it is not reasonable to expect that SA would be invited to panel discussions amoung the earnest, well meaning, responsible adults who have to avoid burning bridges, who must compromise, and who labor in obscurity within the confines of an organizational structure.  Those people are also valuable, but they are necessarily going to be irritated by SA.  That tension and even antagonism shows that SA is doing its job.

  If SA does start getting invited to such events, and actually attends, it will be the first sign that the process of cooptation has begun.

And following that, some new insurgent movement would arise, as dismissive of SA, as SA is of US Sailing. 

Vincent, a guy with a lathe can make the part of Ropeye.com easy. This part is not important as Estar notes.

Its the backing plate and rope, the plastic part is just making it looks good.

It seemesto me that the for both the Ropeye and the Colligo, the fitting that goes throgh the deck ("TDF")does provide a real benefit-- when the padeye is loaded up at an angle to the deck, the upper laminate and core will be pointloaded at the edge of the hole.  The TDF spreads that load and prevents the spectra from eating into the deck. 

I think that the ideal TDF for a soft pad eye would be made of something that bonds well to epoxy.  Glue the sucker in permanently. Minimal chance of movement, best load transfer to laminate skin.  Use a screw on backing plate like the colligo version, but make it out of carbon.  Or better yet, forget the threads, and just use a press on "washer" (id of hole to mate with od of TDF). 

Then you can handle the dyneema part however you like-- bond into disk like Ropeye,  knots like Colligo, dogbone, whatever.

The issue is what material is there which has (i) coeficient of thermal expansion matching that of the carbon epoxy foam panel into which it will be glued, (ii) is sufficiently strong and hard to take the load, and (iii) will adhere to epoxy.

Vince.

115 grams for the water proof one, right?  You counting the fasteners in the comparison?    I agree about the can.  It should be plastic.   I looked into rope eye, but I am a bit bothered by the fact that the dyneema is bonded into a proprietary thingy.  What do you do if they are no longer around when it needs to be replaced? 

It is nicely made of aluminum but it struck me as heavy, namely the watertight cap. Heavy to me means as heavy as the stainless piece it will replace- that might not be an issue for 

"A simple solution, just cut your sails to suit ."

Sue-- from a practical point of view, that is the solution.  But is it, or is in not, the case that a properly cut jib on  a straight forestay will have a better lift to  drag ratio than a properly cut jib on a saggy forestay?  

I have a 31 and don't see how you can avoid the issue. Unless you tighten the forestay after the mainsheet you aren't pulling against anything, unless you are pulling against both shrouds, and then mast compression and rotating become an issue. Running backs is the same problem, unless they are both on, you still aren't pulling against anything.
 
I've always felt this way when people put 2:1 halyards on their screechers- you still need something to pull against. The mainsheet is the only real opposing force available.
 
If your jib is cut for the sag, I don't think it is essential, and there is no point in distorting your main shape, though when the breeze is up I've never felt I had too much  mainsheet on.
 
I do think it is one of the benefits of a fixed mast though.

Tucky is onto it. You are always going to have a bit of forestay sag. Your jib should be cut to deal with the amount of sag that you are going to get. This will vary over different conditions but generally you will have more main sheet tension as it gets windier so the variation will cancel itself out a bit.

I suspect Tucky is right for all practical purposes, but for some reason the way Diggler said it made me visualize it better. 

I wish (not for the first time) I were an engineer and could verify this with diagrams and equations.  Even though i can imagine the head of the mast moving forward and to windward as I load up the (hypothetical )forestay ram, I wonder if there isn't some marginal tightening effect on the forestay as that movement occurs-- it seems like every additional degree of movement in the mast would take an incrementally larger degree of tension on the forestay to achieve--  right?