Picton castle Stuns'ls.jpgpost-3035-0-27850900-1407928338.jpg
Picton Castle's port Stuns'ls and Europa's port and Stbd stuns'ls viewed from forward.
I have some questions about how they're rigged and why. (aside from "to capture more wind" of course, pardon the pun)
So, for starters, looking at PC's stuns'ls, the outer head of the lower is rigged to the end of the end of the boom directly. The head of the whole sail is up high on the rig as the boom is rigged above the yard and allows this. Compare this to Europa's which are rigged below the yard to simplify working sail from the yard without having to trice up the booms etc. and therefore much lower on the rig. This leaves a small space between the stuns'ls compared to PC's lower and topmast stuns'ls but what I'm interested in is the stuns'l yard fastened to the outboard third of the lower stuns'ls. Why does Europa use a lower stuns'l yard while PC does not? PC also appears to use a lower stuns'l lower boom at the foot of the sail while Europa uses the more classical swing boom below the sail, sort of like a spinnaker pole but fastened to the hull side. Are there reasons/beneifts to doing it one way vs the other? I suppose a small lower stuns'l boom fastened to the sail is much easier to manoeuver than a long swing boom like Europa has.
Look now at the head of the topmast stuns'ls on both vessels. They're made fast to the end of the yard and not the end of the boom. Why not hoist the topmast stuns'l yards to the end of the booms and not the end of the yards? Is it a structural reason due to the smaller sizes of the spars and fear of breaking them with the added stresses? If so, why not simply enlarge them a bit? The lowers hoist to the ends of the booms, why not the topmast stuns'ls as well? A wider sailplan could be had if the heads were all rigged to the ends of the booms and not the ends of the yards. Anybody have any expertise with this?
Inquiring minds need to know.
Thanks,
Daniel