Over the holidays I killed some time looking through a few back issues of
Cruising World. In the April 1986 issue a boat-based ham operator said he
used a top-fed backstay antenna with excellent results AND he had no in-hull
ground plane. He said he connected the shield from his feed wire to the
mast-side of the backstay and this allowed the mast and all the standing
rigging to act as a ground plane. He didn't say anything about using
stand-offs between the feed wire and the mast. I would think you would get
a lot of signal loss over that much length if you didn't use stand-offs?
If a person could put up with the appearance and make sure the whole set-up
didn't get torn down by sails/running rigging, would this really give good
performance? I don't recall reading about this type of set-up so I guess
its not too common on recreational boats but maybe it could be worth
considering in some situations?