Whisper is rigged with a 58 ft Selden deck-stepped in-mast furling mast and Selden boom. These are secured by 1/2" and 3/8" wire shrouds to through-deck chain plates. This includes a Selden Rodkicker boom vang, a detachable inner forestay, and a Hasselfors adjustable backstay. The backstay is insulated for use as an antenna for our Marine Single Sideband (SSB) and HAM radio.

The inner forestay attaches-detaches to a foredeck fitting, and stows on the side of the mast when not in use. The inner forestay is only used for hoisting our hank-on storm stay sail. This sail is balanced by running backstays. At some point, we may experiment running with both head sails.

The Boom Vang

We added purchase to the Rodkicker vang with and extra block and a spliced spectra core line. We can get the vang into a "down hard" position under load and without the struggle we had before adding the purchase. Duncan added a gas spring to the inside of the vang that prevents the boom from falling when the topping lift is fulfilling one of its other uses.

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At the mast

Since the HR42 does not (by default) run mast lines aft to the cockpit, we had a mast pulpit (sissy bars / granny bars) installed at the factory. Although less than pleasing aesthetically, these are so practical and we learned to love them early on.

Although we have an aluminum spinnaker pole which mounts on the face of the mast, we don't use it for anything more than a fat whisker pole to pole out a jib, a pole arm for an immersed flopper stopper, or an emergency spar. We also installed Spectra strops in the clew of each jib/genoa to allow easy poling out without holding (and chafing/sawing) the jib sheet in the pole claw.

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Running Rigging

The running rigging is a combination of the control lines, sheets, and halyards, running through and around the rig. The hardware supporting our running rigging is all "Lewmar Ocean"-- winches, blocks, fairleads, lead track, and traveler track/car.

The factory installed a couple of locking surface mount Lewmar blocks on teak risers at each end of the mainsheet traveler. These are used to free up the mainsheet winches when they are needed for other applications.

Unfortunately, these blocks were too low and they introduced chafe on the mainsheet. Scott Easom improved this design by raising these blocks another inch off the deck with thick, shaped, teak blocks. This prevents chafe, improves the lead to the winch, and takes the load off the top edge of the block pulley. The ideal install would have been slightly angled aft too, but we wanted to reuse the existing blocks and deck holes.

The factory halyards are all rope-wire spliced. The boat was ordered with a primary and secondary jib halyard, the staysail halyard, and the main halyard. We still needed to add a gennaker halyard and a storm trysail halyard.

We added a Spectra gennaker halyard, and a new Spectra trysail halyard -- which doubles as the boom topping lift. The current jib/genoa sheets are the original factory lines (not sure what they are) and they are holding up very well.

We replaced the second jib halyard with a small tag line. We also determined that the new boom topping lift -- replaced with the stronger Spectra line -- could serve multiple uses, acting as the boom topping lift, a trysail halyard, or a bosun's harness back-up halyard.

We removed the heavy (factory installed) Lewmar Ocean running backstay blocks & tackle and replaced them with a length of heavy-duty Spectra leads shackled to the existing wire running backs. Simple bungee straps/hooks secure the wire ends at deck level, and Velcro wraps hold the spectra running backs on the outboard shroud. When needed, the running back is led aft through the high-load block then forward to the free jib sheet winch. The high load blocks aft are also used for the new gennaker/trysail sheets.