Yeah, Jake, It sure does...



Anybody know the factory set length of a H17 forestay?



Maugan17 could measure his new forestay, "pigtail", swivel and drum, and compare the two... leaving out the adjuster, since it's a wash... then he'd know exatly how much to chop.



Incidentally, after much adding and subtracting, I finally took my original forestay down to the ugy with the swaging stuff and said, "Measure this thing. Then cut me a new shorter one out of it, [specifying a length equal to the jib luff plus 6 inches.] Use the extra to make a little 'pigtail' such that the sum of the pigtail, swivel, forestay and drum equals the original thing. ( brought the parts with me.)



Also, a tip from Randy Smyth: put the adjuster up top, so you can get the jib shackled right down on top of the drum. I tried it and it works great.



Tip from me: Does the Jib sag down the forestay? Mine did. I was running the halyard over a block and back down inside the luff of the jib, tying off to the shackle at the bottom. No matter how hard I tightened it, the darn thing kept sagging. So I tied on another block to the head of the jib, creating 2:1 purchase at the top and so reducing forestay compression. End of problem.



In retrospect, the cause is obvious. With only one block, I had created an upside down "U" starting and ending at the bottom shackle. One leg was the jib's luff, one leg was the halyard. sheeting hard pulled down on the jib, stretching the halyard up, and turned the whole "U" into a 2:1 force multiplier to compress the forestay, creating the slack to let the jib sag. Putting in the 2:1 right above the head of the jib put all those forces on the weak end of the multiiplier. I'd seen a P19, for example, wioth this setup, but hadn't appreciated why they do it.



I do now.



Ed Norris