E29 backstay

Woah! just sourced the little gauge. $220 on EBay. A hundred more through Navitec! These guys think a lot about their vaunted reputation!. The gauge would be overpriced at $20. I will be needing to pull it off and see what I can match up at an industrial supply. If not, the present system of eyeballing the forestay looks really good. This is a problem with this type of equipment. The spares are incredibly high priced and there is a bad habit of the manufacturer letting them disappear altogether.

While killing a little time, I priced a long block Kubota D-950 and an Universal M25-XP long block. The d-950 was $1,900 and the M25-XP $2,900. Apparently, the Universal bronze paint is worth $1,000.

that little gauge is nice but not necessary. Plus, they tend to leak and the accuracy is debatable. They can also be a pain to read in lumpy conditions. When we had ours rebuilt by Sailtec, they recommended not putting the gauge back on. I know that a lot of people on here don't race, but a number of racers I know have given up on the gauge and have gone to a simpler method to get repeatable backstay tension settings that would work for anyone with a hydraulic backstay adjuster.

Get a piece of flat batten material about an inch wide and put marks on it every inch or so. Tape that batten to the cylinder so that the batten sticks up towards the head of the piston. Add numbers to the batten so that as you adjust the backstay, you can get a feel for what numbers correspond to various wind and sea states. Then as you sail, you can easily adjust to set numbers. It looks like this:

I found a ss hydraulic gauge at Fastenall for $25.52 that is actually easy to read. I like your solution even better. There's nothing like big graphics for us old farts. Maybe I'll try both.

I like Andy's "KISS" solution, and have observed this Good Idea on other boats.

While on this general subject, I should mention that when we replaced our standing rig a number of years ago, our rigger advised adding a conventional turnbuckle between our hydraulic adjuster and the new backstay termination.

With the turnbuckle open all the way we can attach the backstay to the stern ss plate. This gives us a way to tighten it up sufficient for normal sailing if we are away from home waters on vacation and ever have the hydraulic pump fail. (This happened in the past with the old Navtec adjuster. )
This might seem like sort of a "best and suspenders" approach, but it does allow you to manually apply tension, if needed.

Another "OLD FARTS" Opinion

Having seen 22 posts....200 odd looks, and old farts mentioned....and I qualify....here is my experience....

Islander Bahama 24: Split back stay....no problems....worked fine....tiller steered so I sat well forward... no interference.

Cal 29: ditto...mast like a tree trunk with very little bend

Chance PT30: ditto bendy mast and got a lot of use

Seidelman 299: Wheel adjuster....Not cheap, but worked beautifully....Bergstrom and Ridder rig needed a very tight rig

Ericson 35-3: with the fore and aft lowers holding the lower section, I have a hydraulic to both tension the headstay and bend the mast to flatten the main. Instead of the batten with markings I have a piece of tape on the rod (Forgot....written on check list) at a specific distance for the max 1000 lbs, drop off 3/4 inch to 750......where I sail all the time......at rest in the slip....totally slack....only about 200 on the turnbuckle....there for safety in case the hydraulic fails.

My old fart musings....and not worth .02

Interesting thread for a fixed-backstay guy like me.

With a masthead rig on a 35 or 38, how much bend can you get without busting the boat in half?

Is it enough to effectively flatten the mainsail?

Christian, I'm not as familiar with the bigger Ericsons but I used to race on a C&C 35 mkIII. On that boat we used a combination of the hydraulic backstay adjuster and the babystay to get some mast bend as well as being able to adjust headstay tension to the conditions. With the IOR influenced high-aspect main on that boat, I'm not sure how much the mast bend helped, but being able to adjust the headstay tension was definitely an improvement over just having a fixed backstay.

Our Ericson/Olson 911 has a masthead rig as well, but a much bendier mast section so cranking on the backstay gives us headstay tension as well as mast bend. The rig was also designed to accept checkstays to take the bend back out of the mast if desired to put some power back into the main.

Christian,

I'm sure your 38 has an adjuster. An easy way to see if any bend is induced is to slowly increase tension while sighting up the mast. Any bend will be obvious. The 34's mast does bend. Also I use the Cunningham to flatten the main. The biggest plus is control of the jib shape.

Be careful of pressure. I get nervous above about 1500lbs.

I'm sure your 38 has an adjuster.

I'll look again.

Actually, my turnbuckle is very hard to turn any further by hand. It would take hydraulic force to get a few inches out and really stress the rig.

On the plus side, I could keep the backstay more slack most of the time.

Worth considering. My primary need would be sail-flattening since I'm not racing this boat. .

Hi Peter,

The backstay adjuster on my E27 is a Wichard ratcheting backstay adjuster with handle. It works fine but it takes longer to adjust than a split backstay adjuster. I got mine on eBay years ago for $200 +/_. looks like they are in the $1200 range new.

1st. a quick shout out to My friend Mort. Glad to hear you chime in here! BTW your not that old! but your farts do stink! Hope your doing better with the arthritis since i've seen you last.

Having raced / co skippered 4 seasons on an 85' E38 my assessment would be in complete unison to Slick470's. With the high aspect main it helps, but a well cut / condition main is a prerequisite. I also think Ericson mixed and matched the rigs on these boats? some with single profile spars (kenyons) and some with tapered spars (sparcraft blue labels) I think? There was allot off selling off of companies, aquasitions and mixing of spar parts in this era. The tapered spars IMO seeming to be more amenable to being bowed. Not BC of the taper but I think the Sparcraft extrusions might have had a little lighter wall thickness.
Knocking the sag out of the headstay, especially with high windage foils like curlers have, improves pointing and lets you control the slot better. For speed on this design I'd speculate to say the biggest advantage speed wise is probably being able to slack off when working off the wind. Having the ability to bag out a big ol %155 can really help pull in the right conditions. However If I were doing the kind of sailing that Christian is or going for long hauls I would ditch a hydraulic backstay so fast It'd be on the seabed before you could say hydraulic fluid leak. Yea its nice to have, yea its fun to play with, and it can be seriously effective, even essential on racing boats, but on a cruising rig I don't think the benefits outweigh the liabilities. A big part of the attraction of Hydraulic backstay adjusters is the ability to make speedy adjustments and their slow as a receeding glacier when compared to a split BS adjuster on tackle.
Serious cruisers on the other hand, require reliable, robust, and simple systems particularly in the standing rigging department, so, everything a hydraulic unit is not. An average gain of 1/10 th of a knot over a 14 day passage won't make up for the two weeks in port waiting to get the replacement parts. Lastly, despite what some may believe. The ability to slack off the BS at the end of the day does not necessarily benefit that boat in any way vs. having a fixed tension. It actually increases the number of stress cycles a hull goes through. It can actually propagate stress cracking, spidering and injudicious use has made for many a Keel smile. BTW I have a hydraulic adjuster on my boat and use it every time I go out (rebuilt twice BTW) but I use it conservatively. It takes allot of compression to get that gosh dern piece of alu-mini-ini-um to bend!

Ian.