Second Opinion on Running Rigging

[Roy M]

Sounds like a good opportunity to drop the mast and inspect all the other stuff that lives on the mast: electrical wiring, all of the lamps, the sheaves, the compression tubes at the spreaders, the fasteners, etc., etc. Those are pretty tough regions to have left unmaintained for so long. Or, you can just wait for an EVENT, and hope that the insurance guys aren't as critical as the rigger.

Some sailors practice an obscure religion called preventive maintenance. The rest of the world believes in the dictum "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". You get to make this choice of belief systems, and you get to take responsibility for the consequences, or not. Sometimes bad things just happen to good people.

[Stumble]

One of the biggest issues here is that you can't tell him what the lines are. Some educated guesses could be made, but you can also get knockoff stuff that is complete junk. There are also some difficulties in telling from pictures, but from what I can see I am with the rigging surveyor.

I see a number of places where it looks like there are diameter changes, which indicates core breaks.

The rolling over of the line could just be the way it is currently run or it could indicate a twisted core. This only matters on core dependent lines, but assuming these are core dependent that is indicative of unequal loading, which usually is a result of asymmetric loading, which indicates breaking/broken core and bad splices

Finally if this is core dependent line then the fraying of the core indicates a decrease of line strength of ~50%. No way would I put to sea with this. If it is non-dependent line like Endura braid then it doesn't matter.

All in all I wouldn't have a great deal of confidence in the remaining life of these lines.



However I often strip these lines down by tearing the core out of them, and using them as covers for new dyneema lines. Since all you need them for is to act as a non-load bearing tail, and to increase the girth in the working part of the line it lets you just buy new amsteel. Which is a fraction the cost of new Endura Braid.