Rigging for Gulf of AK

[svtatoosh]

Hi Folks,

I'm in Majuro, Marshall Is assisting a 45' Island Packet owner on a passage to Dutch Harbor. The rigging is 14 years old with 20 thousand miles...mostly tropical. My understanding is that 10k miles is the safe limit for stainless and that would be in a coastal non-tropics frame.

Your thoughts? Am I being overly cautious?

Tom

[lamadriver]

No your not be over cautious.

That is a big stretch of water, that can be huge and confused.


I'm no rigger by any means:

My rigging was 8 years old when I bought my boat and it had less than 3000 miles on it. It stranded on the lowers on the delivery below Madagascar , we returned to Durban and I replaced all the wire.

Oh and the rig was inspected at survey by a rigger........

I was curious , so I cut all the swages open it the angle grinder, it was shocking .

the rigging was professionally done and it wasn't over swaged. Just corrosion over time

I'd also take a good look at the pins, I would almost gaurentee that you'll find crevice corrosion on 15 year old pins.

On a trip like that I'd also be asking how old the sails are .........


But that's just me. I tend to be over cautious , The paranoia probably comes from 20 years of flying helicopters

[roverhi]

Swages and stainless wire age quickly in the warm tropics. It's time in service not miles that are the issue. 10 years is a figure that's often mentioned as a useful life. That is not a hard and fast number as I've seen rigging go more than twice that long and also seen stainless turnbuckles develop cracks in a year. For the area the boat is going to, would seriously consider rerigging the boat. Don't know what services you have available but the owner could do the rigging themselves with Norseman/StaLok mechanical terminals if you can get the wire locally or have it and the terminals shipped in.