G'day,

Have recently purchased a secondhand Taipan... wow there fast... scared the crap out of me at the weekend.. still getting used to the speed and acceleration.. one moment sailing along the next flying.. anyway my question.. when I rig the boat there are two holes on the mast. which hole do I bolt the shrouds through and which do I bolt the trapese wires to, or do I put the lot on the lower hole?

Thanks

The stay wires go on the lower hole on the hounds fitting and the trap wires usually go on the upper hole.

Regards,
Phill

Funny, I'm just considering going from the two-shackle system to the single-shackle one (only lower hole).

I have the two shackle setup now but find that my trapeze wires don't really sit well along the lower shackle. Of course I had to replace the lower shackle by a much larger one. The one we put on it at the DCC was bend during the DCC and completely bend after the Rem-race that was 2 weeks later. Now I have more than enough room on the lower shackle to group them with the stays.

I always wondered why many boats have the two shackle system ? Does anybody know ? From a load perspective it does't seem to matter much what system is used.

So if anybody knows the answer than please tell

Wouter

Welcome Ironman,

Were do you sail you Taipan ? And in what mode. Singlehanded, doublehanded, with spi ?

If you have more rigging questions than also check out this link. Some FAQ's are discussed here and provided with answers.

http://www.geocities.com/f16hpclass/ahpc_taipan_49_how_to_rig.html

Wouter

Thanks for the link

Ive only had my boat for a couple of weeks and still getting the hang of it.. totally new to the cat experience, spent my youth racing cadets, moths and lasers..live in Sydney, Australia. I am going to use the weekends over the winter to taim the beast so that I can look forward to some racing in summer. Ive only taken it out once so far and that has been cat rigged. I am aiming to recruit a regular crew and sail sloop rigged. No spinekar on the boat.. what Ive read on the hooter sounds like fun..

Thanks for the help on the rigging question.

did you buy 099? its a great boat if you did.

The reason for the two shackles is to get some seperation from the two lots of rigging, if you have them all on the one shackle you end up crushing the outside wires against the mast.

have a look at the pics of the hound fittings in the taipan 5.7 thread in general discussion. it shows the ideal setup with big rings welded on the ends of the wire to get some seperation from the mast.

Wouter,

There's no real strong argument either way - I guess it's just personal preference. I prefer to use two shackles as it means that maintenance is a little bit easier and wires are less likely to get damaged.

This weekend we had a trap wire go at the handle, once we were ashore it was just two minutes to lay the boat over still fully rigged, undo the upper shackle and replace the damaged wire - back up and on the water again in under 10 minutes. Had the same thing happen a couple of times on my old Tornado (over 8 years).

I did try a single shackle approach on one of my Condors but we broke the trapeze several times at the top end and couldn't figure out why as we had it rigged the same way on a previous Condor with no problems at all. On closer inspection we realised that once the rig came under sailing load (the mast bend trapped the shackle tight to the mast)the trap wire stopped articulating on the shackle so that we were actually 'working' the wire just below the talurit and metal fatigue was the result. Since then I've had a preference for two shackles.

A lot will depend on the arrangement of your hounds fitting and the space available to you.

Yep, I'm the proud owner of 099 shes very fiesty and fast. James did a great job of setting the boat up to go fast and now Im on a steep learning curve. My aim is to beat the Hobies around the bouys at Palm Beach in the summer.

Hobies like the Tigers or Hobies like the 14's, 16's, 17's.

For the first you'll need to be a very good sailor and probably have a spi; the others you should be able to get when you keep clean air and not make major mistakes. The hobie 18's should be a good level measure to you and your boat. I don't think any Hobie 20's ever made it too Aus. of the Fox and FX-one are only a handful in Aus if I remember correctly, so you are unlikely to meet these.

Good luck !

Wouter