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Cutter Rig on my E27?

Bepi

E27 Roxanne
My E27 has a well secured 5/8 threaded deck plate that as far as I can research might be there to allow her to be cutter rigged. The plate is located midway between the bow and where the cabin rises from the deck. There is a block on the forward side of the mast roughly a third of the way between the spreaders and masthead. Does anyone have/know of this plate and its uses?
 

nquigley

Sustaining Member
If the deck plate is very well reinforced under the deck, it might well be for a removable inner forestay! The position of the block up the mast is also promising too. But, that combination of features might also be intended for hoisting a spinnaker pole (topping lift and downhaul).

There's a lot of available literature online about pros and cons of adding an inner forestay and a staysail to boats not originally designed to have one. It makes interesting reading. It's said that you gain a knot when you put it up, and you gain a knot when you take it down ;-)
I suspect (?) you might find that the sail area you could add in a functional staysail might not be enough to make the addition worthwhile: there seems to be a consensus that, unless you can fly a staysail that's at least 20% of the total sail area, it probably does more harm than good when used in 'cutter' (slutter) configuration. The main issue seems to be that the head angle (the angle between the luff and leach at the head of the sail) gets too narrow to provide enough effective sail area because as soon as you slightly ease the sail, the top twists away and no longer offers any contribution to the effective sail area. But, it's worth doing the investigation for your boat.
I was only barely able to add a staysail of 20% of my overall SA - but I'm yet to really test it to see if it helps in a cutter rig formation. However, my main reason for adding it was for heavy air when a mostly rolled up jib has an ineffective shape, rather than for 2-sail reaching/running.
 

G Kiba

Sustaining Member
The fitting on the deck is likely for a spinnaker foreguy (down haul) and the block on the mast could be for the spinnaker pole topping lift.
 
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