Forces on top of the mast

Hi everyone!

Let's say we got a sailboat with fractional mast and 2 spreaders, so unsupported top of the mast.

What will happen if we hoist a spinnaker to a top of the mast?
I know, it depends of the mast itself and how strong is it, let's assume that it is strong enough.

I would like to know is there a difference in forces on the top of the mast if we hoist a spinnaker or if we hoist a assimetric spinnaker (genaker)?

Is it possible that assimetric would produce less force on the top of the mast?

In both ways lets assume that we are sailing beam reach or even closer to the wind if we can.

Best regards

 

You'd better flesh out some details of that hypothetical 'sailboat' and it's hypothetical mast and stays before anyone can even start to think about answering your query.

 

Hi!

My question was general, not for one type of sailboat.

I was thinking something like this on the picture:

http://www.dixdesign.com/didi26unander15.jpg

So fractional mast with V1, D1 and D2 and a backstay.

This kind of mast clearly isn't dimensioned for top mast headsails.

But often people hoist bigger spinnaker to a top mast in light winds.

So that is why my question was is there any difference in the force on the top mast if you hoist large spinnaker or assymetric spinaker?

Best regards

 

Well there's the obvious one that the mast is being pulled forward by a damn great load on the halyard which at a guess is orders of magnitude greater than anything the mainsail can generate up there...
Running/reaching deep you have a big forward load which you just don't get otherwise and hugepeak loads you are going to get if the bow is stuffed into a wave.
Shy reaching you still have a big pull up there, but this time its sideways and forewards. Forward loads can be counteracted by vang tension of the mainsail in this case, and result in compression, but both are working together pullingthe mast head to leeward

 

The load on a spinnaker would be less than on a sail used close to the wind. A true genoa is a point load at the masthead and has lots of halyard tension (thus extra mast compression, a halyard lock helps). A conventional spinnaker is pretty much 30/30/30% load on each corner and downwind it isn't much. Often you can hand hold the spi sheet

So an asymmetric will be between the two

Richard Woods of Woods Designs

www.sailingcatamarans.com