The local sailmakers have a lot of experience with the Sparcraft mast at this point and know what to do. You will need your main re-cut for the Sparcraft, or sell it to someone with a Hall mast and get a new one cut specifically for the new spar. That's not such a crazy idea because the NAs are in SF in late September and most out of town boats use AP sails. They will probably need access to HA sails if they want to be competitive. You will have to discount your sail, but perhaps not substantially more than the cost of the recutting work, so it may end up a wash.
Thanks for the thought. Mast damage - while being trucked to Nationals, the mast base hit an I-95 overpass that was being worked on - (so under the posted height). Took a chunk out of the mast base and stressed the spreaders. Probably repairable if anyone's interested in it.
Likely a bit more with slides than a volt rope. Also, if the rig is that much softer fore and aft, there may not be enough tabling to add luff curve, then you get into girth issues. Best move is to shorten the foot a little and start over from there...
Not much choice when you have close to 700 boats made over 30 years and the spar supplier goes tits up.
But it's soooo much easier to blame or ascribe it to a boat config, than it is to go out and get really good at that racing thing. Its the OD version of "My rating it too harsh"
I’m the guy mentioned in the Doyle promo email. My new original Doyle AP main was designed for the Hall spar, which bends primarily at the upper quarter when backstay is applied. That is a universal defect in the original Hall spar, and why you commonly see permanent bend and stress cracks at the hounds, and increasingly breaks. That happened to me a few years ago and that is why I replaced with a Sparcraft. With my new mast, I became suspicious when my three-year old main (originally from the Hall mast) would put me on the podium while the new main landed me consistently at the back of the fleet. It was because the stretch of the old main created extra mid-luff curve, which the Sparcraft needs because it bends more evenly throughout its length. The Sparcraft is also completely straight with little/no backstay. That is why my new standard “Hall” main was too flat through every backstay range, and could never power up. Paul D worked with over last summer on recuts, measurements and eventually a total redesign of the Doyle main for the latest Sparcraft model (which may be different than the old Sparcraft masts from 20 years ago on the French-built J105s).
We don't go by "tension" - we look for over-bend wrinkles in the main and just assume that it's OK to crank it until we see wrinkles show up. Probably if we kept increasing shroud tension that would eventually banjax the mast, but we find that we can limit the forestay sag without extreme tension, so it all seems to work out.
Yeah - I suspect that the tuning for Sparcraft is very different because the bend is different. Here's what we do:
