It worked!

Sunday was not ideal for testing new rigging, we arrived at Kurnell Cat club http://www.kcc.asn.au/ around 10am and it was already blowing 15kts from the NE and on a sunny day in Sydney it always builds from the NE. We kept rigging and discussing the options if it built too much for testing.

By the time we had it all sorted and ready to go it was a solid 25kts and gusting to 28! Then we thought about it for ten seconds and decided to go out and see how it held up. The reasoning being: If we are going to use it at all then it has to be able to handle this much wind...

So off we went, cautious at first but then after it held through a couple of really strong gusts we started to get into it more and very quickly we were giving it the full message.

With the race about to start we lined up and warned James not to start to leeward of us just in case it all came crashing down!

We sailed the boat as normal for the race and then came in to check everything was sitting right on the thimbles and not rubbing on something it shouldn't. All looked good and the only issue was that the forestay had elongated a lot more than the adjustment range available, so now I will have to shorten the forestay and we are good to go.

There was a fair bit of elongation in both sidestays and forestay but that has stopped now so I think that was just the fibres and splices settling in. The sidestays really shrunk in diameter, down from 3mm to just over 2mm!! but they look really well bedded in now. The Forestay is quite different in terms of finishing as it has a coating on it and I think that explains why it elongated so much, the coating is quite thick and its not until there is a lot of load on it that the rope can really compress and therefore elongate to its natural length. It seems to be settled now and after another sail we will know for sure.

If you have a boat that doesn't restrict you to wires in the class rules then I reckon DSK78 is a viable option and for sure all A class cats should run this stuff! We saved 1.8kg from the rigging!!