27 year old rigging in very good condition

[roland stockham]

My understanding is that age is not the critical factor it's just the easiest one for insurance companies to measure! The key factor is cyclic load duty. S/S when loaded above 10% work hardens and fatigues causing it to crack and fail without warning. Below 10% this does not happen. So if your rig loadings are below 10% of the wire and fitting failure load the rigging should not deteriorate significantly with age. This why race boats renew rigging every 3 years or less and cruiser can get 20years or more. If you have never looked at you rig loading it is worth doing as a winter project. I recommend Brion Toss's book on rigging to find out how as it is way to complex to explain here.

[JPA Cate]

We used Sta-Loks on our previous boat. You are supposed to replace the cones when you replace the wire. But the important thing is we never had a failure of the Sta-Loks. We had one forestay break, at only 4 yrs. of age. The stay had a furler on it, and it broke while hard on the wind, in only about 20 kn. or so., so it must have work hardened from stress. We immediately turned downwind and rolled up the sail around the furler by hand, (furlers don't furl when the wire's broken, but the sail holds up the furler).

So, in sailing the boat, for the two of us, two different rigging wire failures: the baby stay from internal corrosion, and the forestay from work hardening.



Ann

[seandepagnier]

Stainless steel has no place in any component of critical rigging under stress including stays, bolts, chainplates, turnbuckles etc.



If you have enough redundancy that any one stay breaking the mast will not come down you may be tempted to leave it and see what happens, and if you are not going to be offshore then it may be ok to leave it and see what happens. If you are lucky you will just start breaking strands before the wire fails, but often this is not the case.



If you replace with dyneema you will not have to worry, and can feel confident sailing overpowered most of the time. if you can protect the dyneema from the UV it will last longer than you, otherwise 15-20 years.

[charliehows]

simple question; "I'm looking" presumably means you are considering buying this boat; simple answer; factor the cost of replacing the rigging into your offer and then replace the rigging. 10 years is a reasonable period to begin looking very closely at rigging, 27 years is way overdue.

[chasfgr]

Rigging type, quality of the original 316 wire and the swages all affect the life expectation.
So if you have a 3/4 rig, bendy-mast, flyer, rerigged in the water, by a travelling rigger you may be more at risk than one who has bought the correct wire, made in a specialist works and fitted by an enthusuast.
My experience is that all the rigging failures I've seen have been just next to a swage (usually a lower one and on 2ndry rigging). Then I've only seen about 8.

[Fore and Aft]

The other issue is what happens if the rig fall's over and then the insurance company asks for proof of the rigging age?
I have seen plenty of failures, the worst was a forestay failure that caused the mast to fall diagonally aft and crush the cabin top.
Cheers