How Old Is Your Standing Rigging

[chris95040]

Boat 50 years old.

The mainmast cap shrouds, back stays (double), and head stay are 3 years old.

The cap shroud and back stay chainplates are 3 years old.

The lowers (4 of them) are allegedly 20 years old. I’ll replace them one of these days but sudden failure of one doesn’t seem likely to hurt anyone when daysailing.

The mizzen rigging was all replaced this year, looked considerably older and crappier than those 20 year old lowers.

Does your hunter have that rig with no backstay? Seems intuitively less margin there, less redundancy to give you time to save the rig with a halyard in the event of failure. Not an expert mind you.

[michaeld]

I witnessed a Beneteau 40 dismast in ~10 kts flying an asymmetrical during a club buoy race about five years ago. The port cap shroud failed. The rig was deck stepped and eventually cut free. As I recall, it was a late 1990's build.

[sailorboy1]

[QUOTE=chris95040;3266770

Does your hunter have that rig with no backstay? Seems intuitively less margin there, less redundancy to give you time to save the rig with a halyard in the event of failure. Not an expert mind you.[/QUOTE]

It does and I don't feel there is any less margin. But different topic.

[Sailmonkey]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

Well the mast going down on a new boat suggests it asnt related to rigging age, but a new fitting etc. plus that was over 30s ago. So i am going to stay with my haven’t read a story of a rig coming down that didn't involve an extreme condition event.

I’ve had a rig come down on a Catalina 22 without any extreme weather. The shroud attachment point (let’s not call what this was a chain plate) just broke. The rig gracefully folded in half and tore the mainsail. All took place in 12ish kts of wind.

[rognvald]

The age of standing rigging is relative to climate and usage. The important thing--whether a one-year-old or twenty is a rigorous annual inspection(fresh water) or every 6 months in the Tropics to check for crevice corrosion, stress cracks, and serious rust. My boat spent its first 15 years in Florida and was sailed continuously 6 months a year. I replaced the rigging when we went back to the Great Lakes. My current rigging is currently 15 years old and has spent 13 years on the Great Lakes(4 month season) and the last two years in South Florida. It is in excellent visual and mechanical condition. IMO, many people waste money replacing rigging strictly by age. However, if I were planning a serious offshore cruise crossing oceans(which most on this Forum will never, in reality, do) and my rigging was over 10 y.o., I would replace it. Safe sailing . . . Rognvald

[Marekaofholland]

Boat is from 1994, all oversized. Only coastal sailing. Inspect rigging by professional every two years and every year bij myself. All original. Ok-ed by insurance company.

[StuartWeibel]

Brion Toss' book (The Rigger's Apprentice) has some useful information about longevities of various rigging types that may be informative. Strongly recommend this book for all-things-rigging, and it is well-written and full of humor as well.

Crowd-sourcing expertise is an iffy proposition.

[seacap]

Originally Posted by flyingfin

The "standing rigging" on the Golden Gate Bridge is 80 years old, cables on the Brooklyn Bridge were replaced at 110 years of age

But that wasn’t stainless steel. Huge difference.

[merrydolphin]

Boat 37 yrs old. Standing rigging 10 yrs old. Had a rigger look at it. It all needs replacing.
It does? Why. Weeeaal, you see the spiraling when you look up the shroud? No I don’t. Yeah its there. Needs to be replaced. OOOOOKaaaaayy. If you say so, NOT! After 5 serious cruising boat, tens of thousands of ocean miles, most cruisers go at least 12-15 years or longer on standing rigging, properly maintained and inspected top to bottom, replacing the occasional problem. Good inspection and maintenance pays.
I go aloft and use a metal polish on my rig to protect it. Have never had a rig problem. After 15yrs or so I start to get concerned. Met many cruiser that have well over 20 yrs. on there rigs.

[ErnestV]

Originally Posted by Marekaofholland

Boat is from 1994, all oversized. Only coastal sailing. Inspect rigging by professional every two years and every year bij myself. All original. Ok-ed by insurance company.

May I ask what insurer you have? Pantaenius refuses to insure a rig 15yrs or older, regardless of condition...

[Hillbillybuddha]

My boat is 41 years old. I'm not sure, but I'd fell safe guessing that it's all original standing rigging. I had to move her from the sf bay to the delta. Her sticks are getting pulled next month. New chainplates all around, and re-fiberglassing the deck steps. Let the projects begin.

[Soundhaven]

1990 Island Packet 32.
Chainplates and all standing rigging were replaced in 2020.
Bobstay tang was inspected and left as-is by our rigger. (Bobstay was replaced)

[MikePNJ]

My 19 foot boat is a 1983.

It sat for a bunch of years before the original owner died. He used it exclusively in the central Jersey bay in salt water. I'm using it in fresh water.

She's my first sailboat, I also own a tritoon and have owned other power boats.

When I first set the mast I found a fraying wire on the forestay and 1 port shroud that had a clamp attaching another wire to it. It was an easy decision to replace the standing rigging.

I only have 6 total stays, and to save cost the first season I owned it (last year) I did the headstay and the damaged cap stay along with the opposite cap stay. That set me back $450.

Last October before pulling the boat we had a heavy windy storm and the boat hit the dock hard overnight and bent the fitted end near the turnbuckle, bent the t-bolt in the turnbuckle and the chainplate (not a true chain plate but a stainless connection point to the deck, more like a deck plate) Of course this was one of the new shrouds that was made, couldn't have been the bad one that I was planning on replacing anyway.

I replaced the damaged shroud and the other 2 that weren't replaced leaving a $550 hole in my pocket. I still need to replace the backstay but it doesn't get much tension and the boat isn't sailed hard and only for a few months and gets stored mast down.

The $1000 I spent is 1/2 the boats value but I plan to keep her for a while. If not, the next owner/ owners will probably never need to replace them for the life of the boat.

Next season she gets new running rigging after I figure out a better way to set it for single handing it.

Mike

[Fore and Aft]

Sailorboy1 6 page's in and it must be time for a rigging horror story?
I am currently reading a nonfiction book called "Black Wave" by J & J Silverwood. John accidentally puts their 55 foot cat on a reef. When the mast comes down the spreader virtually cut's his leg of below the knee! There's a picture of him in the book with his left leg missing. It's one hell of a story.
Cheers

[Kaimana]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

This will probably become a crap storm, but .....

How old is your standing rigging and boat (because need both really to understand). Let's try to answer the question in a useful way ......

Aloha Sailorboy

Hopefully I have a useful story to add to this thread: I was taking my 56-foot cutter-rigger sailing fishing trimaran from the Marshall Islands upwind to Hawaii (going back home after a 5-year "fishing season" in the Marshalls).

This boat has a 65-foot stick, 8-1/2 inches wide by 13 inches long, with a 1/4" wall thickness. She's got 3/8" double lowers, mid shrouds and running backstays at the upper spreaders, upper shrouds, staysail stay, and 1/2" backstay and headstay, all 1X19 construction of 304 wire (this is important).

I pulled the the rig and put it on sawhorses on the ground to inspect it before the trip; it was twelve years old at that point. Everything looked good; there were no stranded wires. There were no cracked tangs, no bent thru-bolts, no problems. Everything looked good and pristine. You can see the wide staying base of the mast in the photo below:



Then we started to go to weather. Tropic Bird goes to weather well, and does around 9-10 knots in 15-20 knot trades with relatively little beating up of the crew. After going to weather for 9 days, we were 90 miles away from Johnston Island, when I noticed a few strands loose and fraying on the backstay about ten feet up.

Getting out the binoculars (because sea conditions precluded going up the mast, even with a safety line), I inspected all the other rigging from deck. I found six or seven other wires that were stranded, some in more than one place.

Because taking chances with a rig that weighs a good 600 pounds is just flat stupid, we got on the horn, called Johnston, and the commander of the installation kindly allowed us to dock to do repairs. That rig comes down, it could kill or maim anyone on the boat; and I'd have to live with that forever, so continuing on to Hawaii was not an option at this point.

Johnston is a weird place; it's got all these steel/earthen bunkers with rusty doors that have WWII and later chemical and biological munitions stored in them, for destruction on-site. They've got a big furnace, and when the wind is right they burn the stuff; it's the only way to make it harmless.

I stupidly asked: "Aren't those bunkers airtight, with rubber seals?". Then the guys told me about "leakers", and about "The Cube". There were leakers because the bunkers had rusty steel doors that didn't even close all the way, let alone have rubber seals. Also, Johnston was in the trade winds, and all the facilities on the island were built upwind of the bunkers. One of the facilities was The Cube.

I capitalize that because it was about 200 feet on a side. We all had gas masks, and my buddy's buddy explained that if there was a "leaker", an alarm would go off, and everyone would drop what they were doing and head for The Cube. Once everyone on the island was inside, the Cube sealed up, and had its own food, water, and air supply so that you could wait out the leak until it was safe outside again. Just means that it would go downwind and get dispersed to the countries in that direction.

Fortunately, one of my crew's best buddies was one of the civilian contractors on Johnston, and so we had barbecues and great food up one side and down the other.

Anyway, we pulled all the rigging off the boat at the dock, bit by bit, replacing with new as we went, and found the following:

1. Out of 21 wires on the boat, 19 of them were stranded, most in more than one location.

2. Two chainplates were cracked nearly halfway through, below the deck level where the boat's structure concealed the cracks.

3. Three mast tangs were cracked one-quarter to halfway through.

4. Two 3/4" diameter stainless steel mast thru-bolts were bent almost a half-inch out of line, and had nearly been sheared off by the force from the mast tangs in those locations.

Scary!

We replaced the two cracked chainplates with new, all the rigging wire with new, all new wire end fittings, all new mast tangs the next size thicker, 1-inch mast thrubolts replacing the 3/4-inch ones, and this time made EVERYTHING out of 316 stainless steel instead of 304. $12,000 and three weeks later we were back at sea, for an uneventful trip to the Big Island.

All the cracked stuff, upon inspection, showed corrosion consistent with what's called "stress corrosion cracking". This is insidious, because it can happen almost entirely inside a piece of stainless before it finally shows a surface crack and you realize there's a problem.

I've got a really simple rule now: on any boat I build, and that my family sails on, all chainplates, wire, and mast tangs are 316 stainless, and rigging wire is replaced every 10 years whether or not it looks like it needs it. My kids and wife are worth so much more than the money it costs.

With Warm Aloha, Tim