Galvanized or Stainless Steel Rigging?

[George DuBose]

Properly sized rigging?

The forestay on my 1970 Pearson 26 hull #49 is so thick that when I measured the diameter and checked the breaking strength, the forestay was rated higher than the boat weighed in total.

Later productions of that model had downsized rigging.

[roland stockham]

Originally Posted by George DuBose

Properly sized rigging?

The forestay on my 1970 Pearson 26 hull #49 is so thick that when I measured the diameter and checked the breaking strength, the forestay was rated higher than the boat weighed in total.

Later productions of that model had downsized rigging.

Yes it can be overkill! More weight and cost than required. For ocean sailing I calculate rigging based on about 5% of rated tensile strength as a max wind load based on the righting moment of the boat. This allows for the effect of heavy rolling in bigger waves. For purely coastal the size could be halved. Onlt time I did not do this (with a small mizzen just used for balance an aerials) I had to scrap it because the rigging was unreliable.

When buying a new boat there is a catch, many insurance companies will not take on a new boat unless the rigging is less than 10 years old. It is a ridiculous concept based on nothing more than idleness by the insurer who does not want to actually look at the boat or understand it. In the real world rig life varies from 1 season to 50+ years!

[roland stockham]

Originally Posted by boatbrain

Sorry to rant on, but I think It's not too much topic drift, the question was about galvanized but how about everything? Can I make serviceable stays out of dacron rope? A mast out of an I Beam, telephone pole, straight tree ????

Just ranting and nothing against the industry or having a really pretty first class boat with all the top of the line stuff but someone should write a book about how to get around all those $$$$ sinks.

Absolutely, a friend back in the 1990's replaced the mast on his 45ft Morecambe bay Prawner for about $100 most of which was the trucking cost to get the tree from the forest to the boat, and an excellent mast it was. Costs rise exponentially with loads so a modern competitive race boat is like running a Indi car with cost to match, a 1960's cruiser is more like an old ford truck.

[Fore and Aft]

Boxer I am down here in Gympie and just yesterday I went to Nobles in Brisbane and purchased 90 meters of 10mm 7x7 galvanised wire, 14 thimbles and 42 wire grips. All for $382, this is to rig my 10 meter yacht. I already have all the galvanised turnbuckles. It's the price that attracts me to galvanised wire. If you can wait a year then contact me via my website fore and aft surveyors I will tell you the pros and cons. But really for $382 I am willing to give it a go!
Thanks and good luck

[Snowpetrel]

Originally Posted by Fore and Aft

Boxer I am down here in Gympie and just yesterday I went to Nobles in Brisbane and purchased 90 meters of 10mm 7x7 galvanised wire, 14 thimbles and 42 wire grips. All for $382, this is to rig my 10 meter yacht. I already have all the galvanised turnbuckles. It's the price that attracts me to galvanised wire. If you can wait a year then contact me via my website fore and aft surveyors I will tell you the pros and cons. But really for $382 I am willing to give it a go!
Thanks and good luck

:thumbup::thumbup: now go to bunnings and buy a roll or two of 13mm black poly irrigation pipe to slide over the shrouds to reduce chafe.

Use a Molly Hogan (or flemish eye) splice for much more strength. A Molly Hogan splice plus a few bulldogs gives close to 100% strength vs 70% or so with just bulldogs.

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[Pauls]

Several of the posters above have mentioned the reliability of galv wire and it is true. If you want a truly long lived rig galv is the way to do it. 100 years ago galv wire was parceled and served to protect it from rust. We have better technology now. Make up your rigging and then paint it with two coats of coal tar epoxy paint. Coal tar is used because it is very flexible (approx. 10x the flexibility of regular epoxy paints) and because it has the ability to adhere to surfaces with a little oil on them. After this has cured, wrap the wire tightly with a lightweight cloth tape and then saturate the tape with more coal tar. Finish up by sliding thin wall uv resistant plastic tubing over the wire. This is pretty much a lifetime rig. The plastic tubing is very slick and will chafe your sails a LOT less than bare stainless wire.

By the way, you will find that galvanized professional rigging fittings
Catalog - The Crosby Group are another world of quality compared to what is sold to the yachting community. These fittings are used for major rigging, lifting, etc where the liabilities are huge. Almost everything is forged. Crosby goes into some detail on heat treat, quality control, safety factors, cyclic fatigue, etc. This is good stuff.

There is an American company - I forget the name now but you can find it with a web search - which makes galv 1x19 in a wide range of sizes.

[Snowpetrel]

^^ This is a great way to do galv Pauls, I am not sure it's needed if you start out with good quality galvanized wire. It is even possible the paint might prevent the zinc from protecting the wire as well due to small damaged sections of paint concentrating corrosion on the one part of the wire that has been dammaged. Another idea is to grease the sections under the poly pipe with lanoline or some such.

For thimbles the gold standard is solid galvanized thimbles but they are seriously heavy, I've toyed with making aluminium bobbin style thimbles, or inserts that fit inside normal galvanized thimbles, or even epoxy or g10 inserts or castings inside a galvanized thimble. I'm not sure all this is needed though. Never did on snowpetrel or my folks boat, and haven't seen my distortion over the years.

Have a look at Brent swains origami boats for some great ideas on simple rigging and systems.

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[Boxertwinjeff]

Originally Posted by Fore and Aft

Boxer I am down here in Gympie and just yesterday I went to Nobles in Brisbane and purchased 90 meters of 10mm 7x7 galvanised wire, 14 thimbles and 42 wire grips. All for $382, this is to rig my 10 meter yacht. I already have all the galvanised turnbuckles. It's the price that attracts me to galvanised wire. If you can wait a year then contact me via my website fore and aft surveyors I will tell you the pros and cons. But really for $382 I am willing to give it a go!
Thanks and good luck

Hey Drew, the yacht I am refering to in this post is Alice, the Roberts 38 you surveyed in Hervey Bay last November, thinking of making an offer on her, she appears a Solid, well kept boat...
,

[Snowpetrel]

Hey Drew, nice work on your volkscruiser. Great website you've got, cheers for sharing.

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[hthorei]

Originally Posted by Boxertwinjeff

Hi, What are the Pros & Cons with Gal Rigging, compared to Stainless?.
A boat I'm considering is in need of Rerigging (SS is 14 years old)
If I bought it I'm thinking Gal might be the way to go for economy.
What would the approximate cost comparison be for both types?
The boat in question is a 38ft Cutter Rig, in Australia. Cheers Jeff.

One of the favoured terminals for rigging are Stalok S.S. terminals We have distributed them in Australia for some 30 years without a failure. I also used them myself. They are easy to install and are also re-usable should you ever need to re-rig again. Have a look at marinexaustralia.com.au There is an article by Cruising World on our site.

[Snowpetrel]

Staylocs are great bits of kit. I use them on my stainless forestays. $$ well spent.

Esmet makes some galvanised versions http://www.esmet.com/electroline-end...s-swivels.html not sure how long they would last at sea, but interesting to know about.

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[Pauls]

Hi Snow Petrel,

Paint over galv is recognized as being very helpful. Industry has a LOT of experience here. Yeah, I like Brent's boats and his general approach to a lot of things. He is innovative, very practical and very experienced. That is a good combination.

Crosby sells heavy duty thimbles that are probably fine as is. If you wanted to make absolutely sure they wouldn't bend in I'd suggest welding in a piece of plate inside the thimble. That is a simple and utterly reliable way to achieve the strength of a solid thimble without the weight. The plate doesn't need to be anything close to the thickness of the thimble. Hopefully you would get them regalvanized after the welding.

[Stumble]

Originally Posted by George DuBose

Properly sized rigging?

The forestay on my 1970 Pearson 26 hull #49 is so thick that when I measured the diameter and checked the breaking strength, the forestay was rated higher than the boat weighed in total.

Later productions of that model had downsized rigging.

Not that it's always true, but it is very possible that the rigging could carry loads higher than the weight of the boat. Keep in mind it isn't just the static loads, but also shock loads the rigging has to contain. And these loads can be substantially higher than static design loads.

[DumnMad]

Originally Posted by reed1v

Galvanized stays can last 20-30 years if properly coated and parceled. Has much less stress induced breakage than stainless and you do not have to worry about the lack of oxygen to the metal like you do with stainless. It also has more give. All in all, a better way to go for standing rigging if, and this is important, it is coated with tar or tar like substance(car undercoating will do) and then well wrapped and served to cover the wire to protect from the elements. Go look at some old fishing boat's galvanized wires used to hold their hoists and drags. Most many decades old and still serviceable.
Downside it is not pretty and will not get the yacht club set's accolades. We used galvanized standing rigging for over 18 years after giving up on stainless. Be sure to size it correctly. Some of the old sail design books have the tables you need to size to your boat. Skene comes to mind as one source.

The great thing about galv is there are plenty of rust warnings before you get failure. You'll probably change rigging for asthetic reasons rather than risk of failure. SS on the other hand can look great but then fail at low loads without warning due to "crevis corrosion" and "fatigue".

[fish53]

I'm considering new standing rigging for my boat this year and intend to use galvanized if I do. I'm new to sailing but I fished commercially for forty years and all any of my boats had was galvanized so I'm quite comfortable with using it. The key in my opinion is proper maintenance which isn't all that difficult. Once a year I'd strip the serving, inspect, lubricate then worm parcel and serve again. If the ends are hand spliced instead of spelter sockets or some form of mechanical fitting cost can be kept very low and you can easily carry spare wire which allows repair or replacement anywhere. 7x19x.25 can be had for around $50.00 for 250'.