Pre-bend???

For anyone who as ever stopped and looked at a sailing yacht, like me, I am sure that you would have only briefly glanced and given a passing thought to all those ropes, wires, struts and cables that seem to hold the sails in graceful flow around the mast and above the boat’s hull, preferring to admire the overall effect as the yacht elegantly cuts its way through the water.  But, as I discovered today, it’s worth looking closer at this infrastructure and learning just what it is all about.  

Why? Well, like any vehicle, if you want to get the best out of it, to make it go faster, you have to operate it efficiently, to have it correctly 'tuned' and you need to understand the why’s and how’s to put this into action.  So today was spent looking and learning about the rigging, putting meaning to terms such as ‘rake’, ‘pre-bend’ and ‘centering the mast’ and finally taking the yacht to sea to check the handiwork and making any final adjustments where necessary.

I will not attempt to reproduce that information in this blog, for those of you that want to know more then I would recommend the RYA book “Sail Trim Handbook for Cruisers” written by the gentleman up the mast, Rob.

A great day’s training and another small step towards the dream.