Inner Forestay and Storm Sails

This is the tang, a stainless fitting that the inner forestay attaches to at deck level. The plate sits flush with the deck and the long flat shaft is attached through the deck to the bulkhead below.
Below you can see how the Tang is attached to the bulkhead ..

And below you can see the forestay in place. The mast was taken down for a complete overhaul of the standing rigging at the same time as the forestay was attached to the mast, along with the running backstays.
The last pic shows the brand new Storm jib made for me by Gemmell Sails in Sydney.

When the sail is off, the forestay can be unclipped from the tang and attached out of the way to the chain plate on the port or starboard side. Otherwise to tack you have to roll up the headsail, change course and then unroll it on the other side of the forestay. Despite Sydney Rigging recommending a mechanical lever like the Highfield lever to attach the stay to the tang, I ended up with a pulley system for tensioning the stay. I only discovered this opnce the mast was back on and Sapphire delivered back to her mooring. I've seen some nice levers in a Ronstan catalogue that I might yet use to replace those pulleys but I plan to have the inner forestay and storm jib set up well in advance of even the slightest suggestion of bad weather coming, and might even try having it there permanently bagged on for long voyages. I dont have a photo of the trysail track on the mast or of the trysail up to post on the blog but its all been done and tested. The other thing they did was install a couple of blocks on the boom to set me up with a second reefing line.