I mainly ask for a rough educated guess based on some science. I haven't taken a math class since jr year high school. The tan, cos, sin stuff seems vaquely familiar but I hated it then so I just assume not try to learn it now <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />

if anyone wants to look at this further, the height to the hounds on a 31 is roughly 38 feet or so, beam 22, wt 4000.

I ask because some, on another forum, were saying that the stays on a 31 tri can see up to 20k lbs. This seemed way excessive because the stock 1/4 SS wire stays have a brk str of 7 or 8k lbs. My boat came with 9mm dynex dux synthetic stays which have a breaking strength of 27k lbs. I was mainly curious about what the "safety factor" is to account for some possible unforseen abrasion on the synthetic stays.