[Rhodes22-list] Forestay question

[Jim White]

I am replacing the forestay on Menagerie as when I dropped the mast and 
hauled on for Hurricane Emily I noticed a broken strand of wire on the 
upper fitting side. I was unable to remove the split bushings from the old 
roller furling tube, and when I drilled out the lower one, I found a big 
bird nest of wire strands from the forestay which was close to 
failure....so again good thing I decided to replace. BTW I made new 
bushings by drilling out a white nylon cutting board with a hole saw and 
lightly sanding to the correct diameter, marine texing 3 together and 
presto...new bushings. Has anyone ever used this type of material for ad 
hoc bushing? seems pretty tough...we'll see.

Anyway, the question is...I researched the archived data and found that 
Rodger measured the forestay at 28' 11" (with turnbuckles and hardware?) I 
measured my stay (center of fork eye to center of fork eye) at 27' 6", a 
considerable difference. Has anyone else changed out a stay on the old 
style furling, and can they vary that much in length? My next move is to 
measure the mast before I trim down the stay wire and install the hardware

Thanks for any input
jw

Jim White
Le Menagerie
www.lemenagerie.blogspot.com