Rigging

[JYDPDX]

There's been lots of good discussion on rigging here lately. Wanted to first say thanks for that staby haul-up idea. Is working very well on my boat. When I go out on deck to haul them and I still can't believe how what once was painful and dreaded is now so fast and effortless.

I'm building some rigid forward stays for my poles and am wondering if anyone has any insight. I have been told its a little tricky but am still a bit unsure what the trick is. In the end, the poles must line up and go into the cups of the cross tree, right? And I have decided I do not want to mount anything to the sides of my forward bulwarks, so...... Why can't I build the stays in place with the poles up and then when they deploy, they end up where they end up (obviously tilted slightly forward of 90 degrees from the side of the boat because the forward mount bracket is higher that the pole mount bracket thus making the rigid stay shorter than adequate for a perfect 90 degrees relative to the hull) when the pole is out?

Am I missing something here?

Are there any pitfalls?

[Crawfish]

I think I understand your concern. As long as you keep the solid stay directly in front of the pole and it has a pivot point exactly the same angle as the base of the pole it doesn't matter where they are placed. The further forward you go the more mechanical advantage is taken off of the stay's anchor point to the vessel. I think the reason you see a lot of guys grabbing the bulwarks as an anchor point is to mitigate deck and hull penetrations while still maintaining proper angles. If you mount your solid stay inside the pole it will try to pull the tip of the pole forward as it goes out. If you mount your stay outside it will push the tip towards the stern. This of course is assuming your poles are mounted to the deck with a 90 degree pivot point. Unfortunately if you weld and mount the stay in place out of line you will rock the pole out of its bracket once it leaves the cross tree. It depends if your poles are rail mounted or inboard mounted to which way the base will rock fore or aft.

[JYDPDX]

Ok. These are great points. I should have mentioned, the boat had stiff stays at one time because there is an existing mounting bracket on the cap rail that I was going to use and it is angled to be in line with the pole mount bracket which is also on the cap rail so I don't think they will bind when deployed but this a important consideration to test out before they are welded up permanently.

About the mechanical advantage, is there any rule of thumb for angle? It seems the farther forward you go, the more mechanical advantage and reduced outward pull on the bulwarks at the sacrifice of being higher and further inward (as the bow tapers up and in) and hence causing the pole tips, when deployed, to be forward more. I plan on connecting to the pole a little more than half way out and the distance from the stiff stay mount bracket is about 12 feet from the pole mount. Seems about normal from some of the other boats of the same length I measured at the dock. However, I am unsure of whether or not I should move it forward for a better equilibrium of the two conflicting principals.

Thanks for the insight.

[F/VNightingale]

The thing you want to watch out for is that while a solid stay forward is great, it usually goes hand in hand with the removal of the cable stays of the trolling pole going aft. I mean that's the whole point, to get rid of all of those cables cluttering your rigging. But what a lot of people overlook is the need for ladder braces that cross horizontally from the forward solid stay to the main pole to prevent the forward stay from bowing when you are pounding into heavy weather, because the main pole is no longer stayed to the aft and will push violently into the forward stay. I've been on boats that didn't have ladder braces, and you can watch their forward stays bounce and bow as the main pole pushes on them when the boat hits decent sized waves . Hence you see smartly built trolling poles with a solid stay and multiple ladder braces.

Multiple ladder braces will take care of the bowing in bad weather, but that means you have to get the alignment of the bases just right, otherwise when you drop the poles, the binding that you guys described will be translated into both the main pole and forward stay, causing bowing there. The farther out the poles go, and if everything is out of alignment, the more bending and binding will occur to your framing. Mostly the worst problems occur when you try to drop your poles down to redo the rigging, or tag lines, or whatever, and you forget to unbolt the forward stay from the bulwarks first. On one boat that I was working on, everything was so far out of alignment that we literally bent the main pole permanently forward a little bit before we realized our mistake. To this day I can see a slight bend in the main pole when I go by that boat. Albeit, the poles and stays never actually broke, but its just one of those things that can bug you when you think about it.

[Crawfish]

The ladder stay's are very desirable for not having to mess with a back stay. Nice for not getting in the way of the hoist. As far as angle without seeing the boat I would venture to guess where they were mounted before would be a good starting point. Look at other guys and see if the angle is to steep or not. Post some side shots of the rail and maybe we can see if its too close. I thought you were going to mount them to a place other than the cap rail though? Make sure you have surface area on your fastening area with fish plates for extra support.

[carojae]

You can apply a carpenters trick (illustrated with 12" tiles such as you might see on your home floor).
If you count 4 tiles up and 3 tiles across, the diagonal end point of each end will measure 5 feet. So...
You can double, triple or quadruple these same values and find your front ending point of where your stay should mount OR simply use this for a big square which is probably smarter. The 4' measurement would represent your pole.
You can find the plane level of where your front stay should be. Then you use a string to make it all parallel to the boat bow to stern centerline so that your pole doesn't pull forward or lean back. The string should be somewhat equal - 10' back and 10' forward from the center of pole for example to gain a fair parallel.

3x4=5 jpg.jpg

(23.44 KiB) Not downloaded yet

[JYDPDX]

So, is the ideal rise/run ratio for this 4 to 3?

[ironpaso]

I cannot answer that this is the correct ratio and distance to set your forward poles, actually doubt these would be the correct distances because your boats all vary as well as your main poles. However this 3,4,5 formula is a geometry function that is always constant. If one leg of the triangle is 3, and the other is 4 the remaining side will always be 5. The principle works for inches, feet or miles. The result is always a right triangle with a 90 degree corner. Harry

[Benmar]

Try a laser pointer for alignment... with the pole out you could shoot through the hinge holes like bore sighting a gun (provided there's nothing in the way). You could also offset the laser (since there's always something in the way) If your forward pivot point is on axis with the pole's pivot, there will be no binding. You can cope with a little "forward swing" (-1ft at the tip) People rarely seem to get this perfect, as the shape of the hull or bulwarks forces some small compromise. Mine tighten up a tiny bit when they're down, and rest slightly aft of center in the cross tree. Since the forstay's pivot point usually can't be lowered, you could raise the pole's pivot point to bring the pole into "plumb" aka 90deg to the deck. If a laser shone through the center of your pole bracket shines through the center of your forstay bracket, yer golden. As far as ratio... mine are about 1:1.5 longer side being hight.