Christian
Super Anarchist
Well - obviously not - unless something else fucked up......................soma said:Wrong. Plenty of cats (including many GBs) have lowers, caps, topmast shrouds, runners, etc. The decision comes down to windage vs weight vs cost vs lots of other factors. You can dispense with cables if you increase the carbon in the tube. Likewise, you can go without diamonds altogether, or a single set of diamonds, or inferior and superior diamonds, or double diamonds, jumpers...Multihulls have too much athwartship flex to allow the multiple shroud approach to standing rigging to function the way it does on a monohull.
Instead, spreaders, jumpers and diagonals are used to provide sufficient stiffness to the spar and prevent mid-section buckling.
The head stay, the windward shroud and the mainsheet act to support the rig and keep it from toppling over. The leeward shroud is often (literally) unbelievably slack.
But...single shrouds with single set of diamonds is a perfectly acceptable configuration if engineered for it.