Blue Wave Swageless Rigging Terminals

[tomj]

Has anyone had any experience using Blue Wave (Denmark) swageless rigging fittings? They appear to be robust and are easily assembled and appear not to use "cones". Any Pros/Cons appreciated. Thanks..

[GordMay]

Blue Wave / Suncor Terminals:
http://bluewave.dk/marine/Index.asp
http://www.suncorstainless.com/quickattach.html

A good review:
“New Swageless Fitting Shows Promis “ ~ by Bill Sandifer with comments by Jerry Powlas
("Good Old Boat" magazine, March/April 2000)
http://bosunsupplies.com/GoodOldBoatQuickAttach.CFM

HTH,
Gord

[Intentional Drifter]

This is one of those questions where I wonder if I'm just being a worry-wart: How often do contemporary swaged fittings fail, in a "typical", 40-foot or so boat, used offshore? If I do regular rigging inspections, periodically rinse with fresh water, and don't allow problems like broken strands go unattended, is this something for which I really need to worry about? Do people typically carry spare standing rigging cable and fittings? That sure seems like a lot of weight and room, if the likelihood of needing it is once in 10 years or so.

Please educate me.

ID

[Sandero]

I did a pretty hard 600 mile beat and discovered that the lee lower had some broken wires at the bottom where it is attached to the turnbuckle. The failure was due to "working" I assume. It was about 7 or 8 yrs old at the time.

Since that time, we carry a length of wire for the longest shroud and some fitting to be able to make one up if need be. The room is not bad as it is a flat "coil"... but it is heavy.

I "filled" the terminals (top) where the cable enters with beeswax to prevent water from entering and remaining inside the terminal.

Jef
sv Shiva
Contest 36s

[tomj]

Thanks for the replies - I had read the Good Old Boat review.... I plan on carrying a couple of the Blue Wave terminals on our Alberg 37 as spares (along with a "spare" piece of wire just in case).

[RandyAbernethy]

ID: Problems seem to show up just where defjef mentions, at the fitting. If you have enough slack on your turn buckle you may not even need new cable, just cut back the old shroud and reattach.

[Intentional Drifter]

Thanks, Randy. It does sound like I should have a spare fitting on board, as well as the proper tools.

ID

[double u]

...nobody will see broken "inside"-wires, only if any of the external circle are broken, & then only if the break is outside the terminal...
I used to be an optimist too, until I cut off a swaged 8mm eye- & discovered 3 broken interior strands...

[GordMay]

Greetings and welcome aboard the CF, double u.

[roverhi]

Read an article a while back on destruction testing of old swaged rigging. They took a bunch of scrapped swaged wire and loaded them to failure. The most disturbing part about the results was that you couldn't tell from appearance how failure prone the swages were. Some that were badly cracked and looked to be near failure exceeded the wire breaking strength while others that looked okay failed prematurely. Made visual inspection seem of limited efficacy.

[double u]

@least in theory:
we should go for all-sta-lok standing rigging & change the wires every 8-10 years - the staloks are reusable, remember, only need new cones...
expenditure less than new tires on the car (proportinal to value of course...)
(but I myself sinned in the past...)

[xslim]

Hi guys!
I'm planning to do full change of standing rigging on my 40ft sailboat.
Shop I often buy stuff (Germany) offers Blue Wave swageless terminals.

Are they any better than Sta-Lok ?

[JPA Cate]

^^^^^^

I couldn't say Sta-Loks are better, as I have no experience with the other product. However, I will say that if you ever have to do a bush repair somewhere the replacement wire can be shipped to you, if you carry spare cones, you can easily replace the wire and get going again, as we did in Vanuatu. They are easy to assemble.

Ann

[pcmm]

Originally Posted by tomj

Has anyone had any experience using Blue Wave (Denmark) swageless rigging fittings? They appear to be robust and are easily assembled and appear not to use "cones". Any Pros/Cons appreciated. Thanks..

Don't know where you got that. Step 4 of there instructions specifically states "place the cone over the core section of the wire..." They're no different in design and execution than Stalocks or norseman. guess it all depends on the price and availability of their cones.

[xslim]

The difference is that in Sta-lok, you put cone on top of internal strands, and wrap the outer strands on top of the cone.
in Blue Wave, you put cone on top of whole wire, and then you put a compression ring on top of cone.