When HS and I raced our International Dragon over at Medway Yacht Club, we were forever adjusting our backstay tension… just like radio sailing. Calibrating the rig so you could see and record what you were doing was just as vital – on backstays, …not as easy as it sounds!!

So for the same reasons, we constantly adjust backstays in radio sailing. What is a way to know “where you are” with your adjustment?

I was lucky enough to get a new IOM from SailboatRC last October. I’m only just getting to use it really. I bought the version of their package where the factory sets up all the rigs for you too. (Not that you’d notice in my results – ha ha !). On the three rigs (A,B,C) when they have the backstays set up correctly in the factory they run a fine black pen over the lines leaving you with a black dot on both sides of the loop. So line up the two dots, and you are back to where the standard factory setting – “voila”, I thought !!

The thing is that inevitably the owner, and at Datchet all the experts who come to help(!)… all have a tweak of the backstay. It’s quite difficult to see it clearly whether it’s your own hand on the bowsie in the way, or someone else’s.

So I went down to the stationers and bought a very fine permanent red pen plus the same thing in black. Now look at the photo above :-

On the bowsie side of the adjustment loop, I marked the factory dot in red colour. It is on the right hand side of this photo. Then I took the black pen and a ruler and placed, for now, a black dot 1cm above the factory mark and a second dot 1cm below the factory mark. It’s a 2:1 adjustment of course, but now I can see half a cm above and below the (centre) factory mark. I suspect I might have to add a further two dots, making five in total, but let’s see how we go.