When you think about rigging, quality of sleep is probably the last detail on your mind. If you plan to do any kind of passage making, quality of sleep should become a priority in your desired attributes list for your rigging. Remember, the headstay attached right above the V-berth in the forward cabin!
Steel rigging with hank on sails or roller furling sails will present a problem to (trying to) sleep off-watch crew. The foil of the furler will constantly tap and shimmy on the stay, making constant racket that is transmitted right over their head! Bronze hanks are just as offensive in anything but high winds.
Bronze hanks in high winds will sit still and quiet down, but anything else will cause the hanks to shimmy and twist on the steel stay making a grating sound that will keep everyone under it awake!
Synthetic headstays are rope and not metal, making it quieter in terms of noise transmission. Then, to protect against chafe, the sail needs to be fitted with soft hanks which look like webbing straps that relocate the bronze hank to the side of the sail. Soft hanks on a synthetic headstay are completely silent!
The sail can be luffing, twisting, shimmying, anything; and the off-watch crew in the V-berth will sleep peacefully under the silence of the synthetic headstay.
