I'm having a bit of trouble getting tension into my dolphin striker, the beam bends about 10-15mm before it tensions up. Does anyone have photos or descriptions of setups they like for the compression strut? It is currently just an aluminium tube.

I'll have a look around the forum also.

Try 8 to 10mm of prebend without the mast up, with the rig on and sailing this should come out to about zero prebend with a very tight dolphin striker strap.

My Dolphin striker post is 25mm OD, 3mm wall thickness. Goes through the beam and attaches to underside of mast step. Your not compressing the front beam between the post and the mast step are you?

What club do you sail at Nick? I would like to follow the results of your new platform.

Darryn
Mozzy
1782

It looks like I might just have to get a new, longer compression strut, the current one is loose, even with the tensioning bolts tightened up at the side.

The strut does go through the beam so that the mast step and strut are on either side of the top wall of the beam. The beam isn't being crushed.

I sail out of Royal Queensland. Don't follow too closely, I'm sure there won't be any spectacular results. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Hi Nick,

if your strut has no adjustment, some don't they just have a pop rivet in the botton to hold strap in place. You can tighten it by removing rivet the putting a spacer in and a new longer rivet. Use a lever to open up the space to sqeeze the spacer in which pretentions the strap. Didn't realize this was a common occurence until seeing Greg Goodall attack a Capricorn one day.

Great minds think alike, I did that about 2 hours ago, hehe.

It wasn't hard to do because there are a set of bolts through the beam and the strap just inboard of the hulls. Undo these, insert spacer, fix spacer in with bolt (in my case), and tighten the tensioning bolts back up. Worked like a gem, got about 5mm prebend in the beam now.

Atleast the strap is under tension now before the rig tension comes on.