Forestay Tension??

[Matt19020]

Someone came over and advised me to tighten up my forestay because there was to much play in it. This person has a conventional keelboat and a backstay.
Would it be correct to assume that if you have the shrouds adjusted properly the forestay is also tensioned properly? because of the absence of a backstay.
Visually the mast does seem to be raked forward slightly from the upper shrouds on up and a tighter forestay would also cause more forward rake.
I have the FF2 roller furling and I used the Loos guage on the shrouds.
My thinking is if I tighten the forestay more I will also be tightening the shrouds past thier recommended range and if I loosen the shrouds I will be loosening the forestay because of the absence of a backstay.
Am I missing something obvious?
I have had a trailerable sailboat before with a hank on jib type of setup which was considerably tighter then this is but only had one set of shrouds and no backstay there was no forward rake that I could see.

[Catigale]

Peep!!! 10 yard penalty to your marina neighbor for giving advice on a setup s/he knows nothing about!!!

You do have to be careful about advice from keelboaters - some of the knowledge they have doesnt apply to Macs...

But forward rake is wrong....a 'properly setup' Mac should have some aft rake as well as mast bend - a slight arc to the rear to fit the shape of the Main luff....people have tuned them differently but thats a general description of the starting spot.

Tightening your forestay would make your rake worse, correct - and adjusting your forestay will change all your shroud tensions too...

[Matt19020]

Thanks Catigale for the advice. I know I still have a lot to learn but its nice to know I am not totally off base with some of my thinking.

[Frank C]

Matt, if your mast has forward rake, then your keelboat neighbor's advice was just a bit too cavalier. Rather than needing forestay tension, you need a full rig tuneup. The best suggestion I can make is to read Bruce Whitmore's Rig Tuning Guide, under the button-left, Featured Articles.

In oversimplified brevity:

• 1. You'll first set the mast rake with a forestay adjustment. Since your turnbuckle is good for only a couple of inches, that is the amount you have to work within. You wrote that your mast is raked forward, or that it bends forward from the spreaders, up??? Sounds like you have reverse rake or reverse pre-bend. Neither case is good.
  
  1a) If your 2 inches of turnbuckle adjustments leaves the mast still raked forward ... how the heck did your forestay get too short ~~!!! Mast rake is generally a result of choosing the correct length of forestay. Roger sets this at about 4 degrees aft. I shortened my forestay by 4 inches, and that resulted in a rake angle of 2 degrees aft. Ergo, two inches of turnbuckle travel should yield only ~1 degree of rake.
  
  2. You are correct, you never set forestay tension, in fact, you shouldn't ever change the forestay setting. Once you have defined mast rake by a given forestay setting, you then tension the rig with the shrouds, using your Loos gauge. The steps for doing so are too lengthy for a post, which is why you need to read Bruce's article. And ... after taking all the time and effort to define a good rig tune at the shrouds, you'll never want to impair those settings by changing the forestay setting ... you want to freeze it.
  
  3. If some things you're reading in that article seem unclear, please take time to ask more questions here in your thread.

You'll never know how many other owners will benefit from seeing your questions.

[Matt19020]

Thanks Frank ... I looked at that article last night by coincidence, and printed a copy of that for my lunchtime read. I am using that in conjunction with the owners manual and the loos guage recomendations. Hopefully I can figure it out better then my setup now. I know something is out of sync. I will stay in touch as I "dial in" a better setup... The only way I can guess I have forward rake at this time is that my shroud chainplates are adjusted so that they are closer to "the shorter or tighter end" of the chainplate adjusting holes. and the forestay is to tight. I think I will break it all down and start from scratch.