Boat is 39 years old.
Rigging replaced in 2017. It had been replaced at least once before by I previous owner. I know that because incorrect undersized swage studs and turnbuckles were used.
At that time I removed and inspected the chain plates and replaced those bolts.
I found a broken wire on a
shroud in 2019 after crossing the
Indian Ocean and transiting the Mozambique channel, which was about 2 months of brutal hard sailing.
The Stem Fitting now has some visible rust and will be R&Red before I continue sailing.
What I have learned:
Talking with a number of other sailors in SA that also ran into rigging problems, it didn't seem to matter when the rigging was replaced. Some that were rigged in
New Zealand that season had problems, and some with quite old rigging had problems. Several rigged temporary stays with
dyneema. Only a few were catastrophic(total loss of rig).
My conclusion is inspect often. It doesn't seem that catastrophic failure often happens without some visible problems first. Broken wires, worn pins, rust at a swage, or rust along a wire like a candy cane, seemed to always happen first.
I would not consider starting a
circumnavigation with 20 year old rigging. But sailing the
east coast and
Caribbean I wouldn't think twice about it. Do a complete
inspection, including going up the mast and looking at every swage, and every pin, before and after every crossing. If you see anything that doesn't look right, fix it before sailing. And you should do that before any
ocean crossing regardless of rig age, as it seems failures of fairly new rigging are still surprisingly high.
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