If you take a good look at the photos of Gypsy Wind elsewhere in this blog, it appears that she has been fitted with an inner forestay. We have been aboard a few other Tartan TOCKs and a couple have, in fact, had inner forestays installed. Ours, however, has just a storm jib on its own roller furling (not reefing, just furling, since as a storm jib its either open or closed, not partly rolled up). We just installed a wire in the luff, there's no foil, and no forestay, so we can take the whole thing down by lowering the halyard, and either coil it on the foredeck, or put it away entirely, easy peasy. We just leave it up since its out of the way, and we like the convenience of having it rigged, and ready for use. Leaving a storm jib in a sailbag, folded up, below a bunk somewhere under a bunch of stuff is a guaranteed recipe for not using it when the weather turns to &^%$ particularly when sailing shorthanded which since its just Barbie and me (Tilley doesn't count since she doesn't have opposing thumbs), is pretty much all the time. Our storm jib is a 9.5 oz 90% of J (or so it looks to me--it was with the boat when we bought it). Hopefully it will be useful for heaving to (which we have only tried in relatively benign weather, but it seems to balance the boat well, with about 30% windward rudder). We also had to add running backstays to support the mast at a tang aft of the new halyard block which had to be installed. They are made out of Spectra, and they are very easy to manage. We use a block and tackle to attach the running backs to the aft end of the genoa track where we have installed an old school snatch block car for the purpose. We are happy with this arrangement and do not feel we should have gone to the expense and trouble of the inner forestay. As it is, we did have to add a padeye just aft of the anchor windless, supported by a short piece of wire to a transverse bulkhead in the forepeak for strength.

This storm jib roller is just another of the relatively new improvements we have made to this boat in anticipation of a long cruise.

A new mainsail was delivered yesterday, with 2 reef points and a full batten at the top. Lazy jacks soon, and GOODBYE DUTCHMAN (dont worry, I'm not a bigot or anything, but I just hated that stupid invention--ours barely worked, and stained the sail at every chance it got.). It came with the boat, and now we are finally rid of that awful thing! Yahoo!