Running Baby Stay

In some ways, this mod may borderline on the eccentric and will not be desired by most c250 owners. However, it is an effective mod for the cruiser. It's also a mod that somewhat depends on the addition of jib sheet coaming winches which free up the cabin top winches as a winch is needed for the pendant... though the lazy side winch could be used.

There are three purposes:

To provide redundancy for the headstay
To pull and hold prebend into the center of the mast
To allow use of a backstay tensioner to adjust the rig tension

Redundancy

When a CDI furler is used on the c250, the forestay is all that holds the mast forward. There are no forward stays as on the C22 or C25 and because of the integral halyard of the CDI there is no halyard or luff rope to hold the mast forward if the forestay should fail. The use of the baby stay may provide some comfort to the cruiser who is a good distance from help.

Prebend

It is difficult to get the proper forward prebend of the c250 mast. To do so, means hardening the shrouds, forestay and backstay quite tight while leaving the lowers looser. Swept spreaders which alleviate the need for forward lowers, don't allow running the rig loose which is desirable during light air and because the forestay can't be run loose...there is no need for a backstay tensioner to harden it during a breeze. The rig must basically be run hard, even so, its difficult to get the center of the mast to prebend forward enough to flatten the main adequately during a breeze.

Simply put, the trade off for not having forward lowers is light air performance when the sails should be powered up by more pocket with a relaxed mast and loose forestay.

If however, the center of the mast could be held forward as with forward lowers, then the rig could be run loose and a backstay tensioner could be used to tighten or loosen the rig depending upon conditions. The problem of course is the boat is designed to use inboard jib tracks which are the reason the forward lowers are not used.

The conventional way of dealing with this is a baby stay, a stay from the mast at the spreaders to foredeck. However, the c250 does not have a deck anchoring location for the stay and its doubtful there would be room for the jib to tack freely anyway as baby stays are usually only found on larger boats with plenty of room for the jib to tack across. The only solution left is a running baby stay that will retract out of the way when tacking.

While I've never heard of one until I tried it... It works well and was quite easy to rig. The rigging requires

a stay made from low stretch line about 18" shorter than the distance from the spreaders to the mast base
a turning block at the base of the mast
a bungee between the lower end of the stay running through the turning block and back to the spreaders (retract line)
a pendant from a cabin top winch through a stem block and to the stay (note: I use the same pendant that is rigged for the drifter as the drifter and baby stay will never be used together

Tacking simply requires the baby stay to be released and the bungee will retract it to the face of the mast and out of the way of the jib. After tacking it of course needs reset and thus why I've named it a running baby stay.

The stay is made from low stretch line as wire would be noisy against the mast. The bungee keeps the stay under tension and it does not flop around when at rest. The connection at the spreaders was made by drilling a hole in one of the spreader mounts and adding a shackle.

Backstay Tensioner

I've written elsewhere that a backstay tensioner is not well suited to the rig of a 250 but the use of a running baby stay does make it possible to tune the rig by use of a backstay tensioner in conjunction with the baby stay. Instead of tuning the shrouds for a hard rig as normally required with swept spreaders, the shrouds are set for a loose rig. When a hard rig is needed, harden both the baby stay and backstay.