Re: stays, in particular forestays.
I seen some traditional lug sail boats, not junks per se, that have used a/or forestays, perhaps attach to a bowsprit to allow them sufficient clearance.
A lot of yacht design, and most of our aesthetic appreciation of it, is based on the limits ancient materials so, thinking outside of box for a moment, would there be any advantage to allowing for forestays?
I appreciate unstayed masts have done 10,000s of miles and 99.9% of the time are fine. But I'm thinking of the other .1% extremes where boats have lost or damaged their mast, eg pitchpoling or being rolled by a wave. Pitchpoling the bend is facing the right direction, would forestays only make enough difference, would they control swaying?ast
See attachment (is it possible to upload images inline).
I appreciate this looks and is bordering on crazy. It's certainly looks funky. The first short coming I can see is that given it is at the bow, the distance between two stays would little. And it would only be stayed to the fore. But I had to wonder. Such a shape is available off the shelf.
The idea actually arose from old skerry-type racers that often tension a wooden mast so its bends backwards to get close to that perfect "spitfire wing" profile. I thought about using a spreader first, you could use two in a v-shape, then I saw this column on the ALC website.
Rough drawing ...