[Rhodes22-list] Whisker Pole Rigging - simple suggestions for gentle-breeze late afternoons?

Tue May 26 22:33:27 EDT 2020

Peter,

You are a big boy and can put whatever you want on your boat.  For what it’s worth, I recommend the Forespar M/N:  HD 6 12-DL Heavy-Duty Twist Lock Whisker Pole.  There are lighter duty poles available; but, sooner or later your genoa is going to fold it half!  As far as using an extending camping tent pole, well good luck with that.  In my experience, using inadequate gear always costs more in the end.

Roger Pihlaja
S/V Dynamic Equilibrium

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From: Larry Gioia via Rhodes22-list<mailto:rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2020 9:07 PM
To: The Rhodes 22 Email List<mailto:rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
Subject: Re: [Rhodes22-list] Whisker Pole Rigging - simple suggestions for gentle-breeze late afternoons?

Those both sound like great solutions for sailing the boat hard downwind.
I mostly need one for really light breezes of 5-8 knots, going downwind on the lake as the the wind dies off late in the afternoon.  Does anyone have any simple non-installed suggestions they use for that?  A non-R22 friend of mine said just get an extending camping pole of some sort.
Without one I tend to do broad reaches, tacking downwind.
Larrys/v Language of LoveLake George, NY
s/v <As yet unnamed>Keystone Lake, Tampa, FL
    On Tuesday, May 26, 2020, 08:46:27 PM EDT, ROGER PIHLAJA <roger_pihlaja at msn.com> wrote:

 Peter,

S/V Dynamic Equilibrium also has the ability to store the whisker and spinnaker poles vertically against the mast.  But, I only have 3 ft of T-track mounted down low and the HD Dwyer fixed ring mounted up the mast.  I used fine threaded fasteners like you did.  But, because of the thin mast wall sectional thickness, I also epoxied the threads when I installed the T-track and fixed ring.  So far, I haven’t had any T-track or fixed ring failures and I sail my boat pretty hard.  I tried sailing with the pole up against the mast this way and noticed a significant difference in windage, heeling moment, and ability to trim the mainsail because the pole was messing up the airflow around the mast.  We now store the poles down low  in dedicated chocks on the foredeck when we are sailing.  However, at a dock or at anchor, we often stow the poles up against the mast to clear the foredeck.  Mainly, the T-track allows the sail trimmer to adjust the vertical height of the inboard end of the whisker pole or spinnaker pole so as to level the pole relative to the clew of the sail.  Having the pole level causes the downwind sail to present the most projected area to the wind, thus maximizing thrust.

Roger Pihlaja
S/V Dynamic Equilibrium

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From: Peter Nyberg<mailto:peter at sunnybeeches.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2020 5:22 PM
To: The Rhodes 22 Email List<mailto:rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
Subject: [Rhodes22-list] Whisker Pole Rigging - A Word of Caution

One of the limitations of YouTube videos is that there’s no way to edit or add an addendum to a video after it’s been published.  The whisker pole video could use an addendum.  For those interested, the original video on rigging a whisker pole is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_7d-D0qNhg <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_7d-D0qNhg>

The video shows me mounting 10’ of T-track to the forward face of the mast.  This was done with 1/4” x 28 tpi flat head bolts screwed into holes drilled and tapped into the mast at a spacing of 4”.  I’d guesstimate that the aluminum mast is about 1/8” thick along this face.

The track serves two purposes.  When the whisker pole is being stored on the mast, both ends are attached to cars that can slide on the track.  When the whisker pole is in use, the mast end of the pole remained attached to its movable car.  This allowed the position of the mast end of the pole to be adjusted up-and-down.

The attachment of the track to the mast was not strong enough to serve in the second use-case.  On a boisterous crossing of Nantucket Sound, while sailing wing-on-wing with my 175% genoa, the bottom 3 feet of track pulled free from the mast.  So, I can’t really recommend the approach I took in the video.

Now, I still use the track for storing the whisker pole, but I have a fixed ring bolted to the front on the mast which secures the mast end of the whisker pole when it is deployed.  I got the ring from Dwyer; I’m pretty sure it’s part # 'DH 668’.  It’s secured to the mast with six 1/4” bolts that are at angles of about 45 degrees from athwart-ships, so two sets of 3 about 90 degrees from each other.  Intuitively, this feels much stronger.

Despite this mishap, I’m very happy to have the whisker pole aboard.  It can be used to set up a wing-on-wing configuration over an arc of 40 to 45 degrees either side of straight down-wind.  For much of this same arc, without a whisker pole, the foresail becomes useless because it is blanketed by the main.

Now, if I could only find the time to get my boat ready to sail for this season…

Peter Nyberg
Coventry, CT
s/v Silverheels (1988/2016)

> On May 26, 2020, at 1:28 PM, Jesse Shumaker <jesse.laten.shumaker at gmail.com> wrote:

…

> Peter has an
> impressive whisker pole setup highlighted on his youtube videos that I may
> attempt to replicate at some point.

...