I've been told by riggers that the insulator's strength exceeds that of the
stay itself. Might be interesting to hear from anybody that has directly
experienced a failure of an insulator. I've never heard or read of such
a failure.

Doug
s/v Callista

"Garland Gray II" wrote in message
news:FuM9c.17580$Ft.5252@lakeread02...
They say there is no such thing as a stupid question, but I'm going to put
that theory to a real test.
I have removed a shroud from my catamaran to install insulators so it can
be
used as the SSB antenna. Since there is no backstay as such, a main shroud
will have to do. However, I now find that the sparmaker who rigged the
boat
is somewhat leery of my installing two more potential failure points in a
so
highly loaded and critical support (of course, all are critical). He
suggests using one of the lowers, but these just won't be very long.
In the end I expect I'll continue with the original plan to insulate a
main
shroud, but a thought came to me. The shrouds are inside a thick walled
plastic tube (which I had planned on removing), so I've wondered if rather
than using insulators I retain the plastic tube and secure a wire...or 2
or
3... along the length of the plastic tube as the antenna? I suppose the
presence of the grounded wire inside would interfere with the signal,
maybe
not. Would it work?