Cost of Standing Rigging

[Cruiser2B]

I bought all my rigging from Rigging Only in mass. They had the best prices and helped with all the questions I had.
My Alberg 30 rigging was about 1700. This was for about 160ft of 9/32 and 90ft of 7/32, all sta-loks(upper and lower fittings) and 8 turnbuckles. The chainplates cost me another 100 bucks.... hardware was another 300. So all said and done I had about 22-2300( I replaced mast wiring and installed led spreader lights). just me and the first mate fabricated it on our floor at home.

I highly recommend Rigging Only

[Target9000]

Originally Posted by Boatguy30

I'm wondering why you think your turnbuckles need replacing, but your sta-locs are OK? I've seen more failed sta-loc than failed turnbuckles. Also, will clearly need to stick with the same size wire as you have not to reuse the sta locs despite other suggestions.

Also, I'd say your prices for chainplates are about right as the polishing will cost quite a bit as well as the material. I would look into bronze myself as no need to polish then. I also understand titanium has come down quite a bit. I think Brian Toss had an article about titanium chainplates recently.

The stalocs look okay but I can see visible cracks in the forks of the turnbuckles. I think they're much older than the stalocs which were bought in 2002.

[Target9000]

Originally Posted by roverhi

First, I'd go with 9/32" or 7 mm wire instead of 5/16". You don't need 5/16" wire for the forces exerted on a W32's rig. The boats have such an easy motion and the external chainplates provide way slack shroud angles and the relatively short mast just doesn't put much load on the rigging. Anything more than 9/32" wire is just added weight aloft which the W32 doesn't need.

The first time I Rigged our W32, did it in two days. Took two days only because It was the first time I'd used Norseman terminals or rigged a boat for that matter. Was cautious and wasted a lot of time with the first few fittings. After a few fittings, got the hang of it and a bit of confidence built up, was able to do a fitting in less than 15 minutes and made really quick progress. Still, there are a ton of fittings to do wih the boom kin, bowsprit and staysail. When we changed the mast, don't ask, redid the wires in a couple of hours though we didn't have the boomkin and bowsprit wires to mess with.

Attach the snubber to the bobstay fitting. The pull is much lower down so gives a better catenary and the boat will sail a lot less at anchor. Used to remove the snubber from the bobstay fitting on longer passages and reattach the tether when we got to our destination. Left it in place for one 500 mile passage and it came through with no problems. Used the same tether for 24/7/365 anchoring for a year and a half and it was still in good shape at the end of our cruise. Attached the tether when we anchored in Hiva Oa and removed it for the passage back to Hawaii when we sailed north the following year.

Work out an arrangement with your new bowsprit to rig a Solent/Asym. spinnaker forward of the headstay tang. A solent rig will make setting really large reaching sails a no pain proposition and way eaiser to set an Asym forward of the headstay than behind it. Doesn't have to be a lot of distance between the headstay tang and the Solent/Asym tang. You've already got a bowsprit and only need enough room to furl the sail if you go with a Solent Rig.

Your cost for the external chainplates seems a bit high. You can buy the stainless already cut to the proper lengths and drill the holes yourself if you have a drill press. Even if you don't have a drill press, you'd probably be way ahead money wise to buy a cheap one, drill them yourself and then send them out for electropolishing. I wouldn't do the square holes for carriage bolts like the original Westsail factory setup. The corners of the square holes are stress risers and a source of future cracking. After you are pau, you can sell the drill press. If you bought a used drill press, might even make money on it.

Very good points but on the rigging size... The previous owners sized the rigging up to 5/16 even though stock the boats came with 9/32. I calculated the weight difference and it works out to about 16lbs. Not too bad all in all. Several people on our blog also chimed in on the size differences and said they had westsails that were fine with the 5/16.

Our boat went through a 360 degree roll off the coast of Africa and came up with the rig intact but I think it must have freaked them out. Hence the doubled up weak spots and the upsized rigging and chain plates.

[BillAU]

Originally Posted by Target9000

I'm about to completely replace the standing rigging on our Westsail 32 and thought I would share some current cost numbers for those of you that are curious. I know people are always asking "what does it cost...?"

Our boat is cutter rigged and has a single backstay. We have two bobstays and four boomkin stays. I will only be replacing the primary bobstay and one set of the boomkin stays since the extras are just there for backups.

Since we have a boomkin, the attachment point for it is a critical rig piece and I'll be replacing it along with the entire bowsprit. I'll also be replacing all of the turnbuckles on the boat.

Basically the only thing I plan on keeping/reusing are the sta-lok eyes on the ends of all the wire ropes and I'll also keep using the current mast tangs which appear to be in good condition.


So far its looking like this (roughly):

Wire:
$165 3/8" 1x19 wire (bobstay)
$1495 5/16" 1x19 wire (shrouds/stays/boomkin wires)
$135 1/4" 1x19 wire (whisker stays)

Terminators:
$300 30 x sta lok replacement cones

Turnbuckles:
$770 11 x 1/2" turnbuckles (for 5/16" wires)
$80 2 x 3/8" turnbuckles (whiskers stays)
$110 1 x 5/8" turnbuckle (bobstay)

Chainplates and tangs:
$275 1 x boomkin cross piece
$90 2 x boomkin tangs
$80 2 x whisker tangs
$720 6 x chainplates (external)
$80 1 x stemfitting

Bowsprit:
$1190 1 x SS box bowsprit replacement
$200 2 x SS sampson post replacements
$90 1 x SS bowsprit angled pad

I also got quotes on going to DynaDux synthetic rigging but found that it was a lot more money not because of the cost of the synthetic rig but rather the cost of replacing all of the terminators. They are expensive by themselves, but they also require all the mast tangs to be replaced to accommodate the extra width.

I'm at the stage/age where I'm tossing-up between buying a larger sailboat, 39' - 40' LOA, or a powerboat (trawler) so your costing is of interest to me, $5,780 (I believe buying the gear in Oz you could just about double that figure but I'm not sure on that) $5,780 would buy me around 4,000L of diesel. I would also have to add the cost of a rigger. (getting to be to long in the tooth to go climbing masts) Now I'm wondering...How long before you need to do this again...Or any more work on your rigging...And what would be the cost of that furture work
Bill
Australia

[roverhi]

"Very good points but on the rigging size... The previous owners sized the rigging up to 5/16 even though stock the boats came with 9/32. I calculated the weight difference and it works out to about 16lbs. Not too bad all in all. Several people on our blog also chimed in on the size differences and said they had westsails that were fine with the 5/16.

Our boat went through a 360 degree roll off the coast of Africa and came up with the rig intact but I think it must have freaked them out. Hence the doubled up weak spots and the upsized rigging and chain plates."

I misread your original post and thought you were going with new terminals, not just replacing the cones. FWIW, my boat still has most of the original Norseman terminals from 1975. The 2nd owner replaced the wire in the '90s. Think he used new terminals for the lower bobstay and boom kin wires because they'd spent most of their lives in the water. AFAIK, they were still okay, he just was being cautious. If you have bronze turnbuckles, I wouldn't change them. Bronze is pretty much forever if it hasn't been abused. Though a roll over could be called abuse. We replaced the original stainless turnbuckles because of cracks after only 4 years in the tropics. 2nd set of composite bronze and SS Tbuckles also developed cracks after another 6 years and were replaced with bronze by the subsequent owner. The bronze ones are still doing fine after 20 plus years.

Double boomkin stays aren't such a bad idea. The fellow that had to abandon his W32 on a Cape Horn rounding looked to have lost his boom kin as the backstay was hanging loose. Mast was still standing but was whipping around like a wet noodle with the sea condtions. Believe the skipper was in his '70s and decided to abandon the boat and live to fight another day when a freighter offered to take him off.

Good luck with your project. The Westsail 32 is a great boat for going places.

[Target9000]

Originally Posted by BillAU

I'm at the stage/age where I'm tossing-up between buying a larger sailboat, 39' - 40' LOA, or a powerboat (trawler) so your costing is of interest to me, $5,780 (I believe buying the gear in Oz you could just about double that figure but I'm not sure on that) $5,780 would buy me around 4,000L of diesel. I would also have to add the cost of a rigger. (getting to be to long in the tooth to go climbing masts) Now I'm wondering...How long before you need to do this again...Or any more work on your rigging...And what would be the cost of that furture work
Bill
Australia

I sure hope most of it makes it at least another 15 years after replacement which seems to be the most commonly thrown around number for SS rigging parts as long as you inspect them.

If you're just looking into buying a boat you could try to find one that has a strong hull, rig, and engine and you've covered most of the bases for labor intensive refit.

And finally, there is a lot more work to the rigging but the other stuff is mainly redoing the running rigging and a few other small changes. Such as removing our staysail boom in favor of putting some tracks on the deck and sheeting it that way.

Good luck in your search!

[roverhi]

Why did you not decide to go with synthetic rigging other than UV issue??. Seems like using deadeyes instead of turmbuckles would make it quite a bit cheaper. The splices on Dynex are really easy to do though not as quick installing StaLoks. Colliigo does prestretch their made up riggimg which is a factor as there is a bit of stretch as the splices work in. Still, with deadeyes, stretch shouldn't be much of an issue. There is a Westsail on the East Coast who went to synthetic rigging. Would be interesting to hear how that's worked out. It's been 4 or 5 years since it was installed.

Not going with a staysail boom was the best deletion we made to our boat. She sailed so much better without the boom. Not having the boom really opened up the foredeck and so much safer without that club hunting for my head. If you have any spare change, getting a custom slightly overlapping staysail makes a difference in the working sail wind range performance. We had a 120% or so overlapping staysail that worked really nicely in place of a genoa for lighter air work. Unfortunately it fouled the forward lower shroud on one point of sail and we had to move the sheet inboard or outboard of the shroud dependimg on the point of sail. Thought about doing away with the forward lowers and going with a baby stay but ran out of time to make the change and sold the sail. Our staysail was slightly larger than the stock boomed sail but could have had even more area if we'd had it cut from measurements with the mast up.

[Target9000]

Originally Posted by roverhi

Why did you not decide to go with synthetic rigging other than UV issue??. Seems like using deadeyes instead of turmbuckles would make it quite a bit cheaper. The splices on Dynex are really easy to do though not as quick installing StaLoks. There is a Westsail on the East Coast who went to synthetic rigging. Would be interesting to hear how that's worked out. after 4 or 5 years since it was installed.

The dux terminators are above 50 a pop so for each stay I have with it that is 100 bucks in addition to the cost of the line. Then I need either another different set of deadeyes to use lashing to adjust the stays OR I need a turnbuckle anyway. Most people are recommending sticking with turnbuckles even if you go Dux because they are so easy to adjust.

In addition to the terminators, I would also have to change the mast tangs since the ones I have aren't wide enough to accommodate the much wider dux terminators.

In short, it was all about money. The Dux just comes out higher cost. Ideally I'd go with it with titanium chainplates/tangs, but the budget just won't allow it for us. The titanium isn't >that< much more. The Dux isn't >that< much more but we're on such a tight budget, we just can't do it.

Frustrating to be so close to something and not be able to grab it, but hey, SS worked for 3 circumnavigations, maybe it will take us around again.

[roverhi]

Yeah, it sucks when the reality of money raises it's ugly head.

[Target9000]

Originally Posted by roverhi

Yeah, it sucks when the reality of money raises it's ugly head.

Oh and another concern, though somewhat minor... Our jibs are all hank on with bronze hanks. They recommend going to soft shackles instead of metal if you have hank sails. Just another cost to run up the bill going to dux.

Alternatively we could go to furling sails but we already have an extensive sail inventory and don't have the money to go all furling right now.

You can make the soft shackles yourself, but I don't have the equipment to load test them before using them like they do at Colligo so I'd rather not trust home made ones. And they aren't cheap when you add up how many it takes to have a full set of hanks.