Rust on New Standing Rigging

[SebastianSmith]

Greetings,

Here's a mystery...

I changed all my standing rigging just under two years ago, buying the wire from a reputable US outlet with swaged upper ends and, after cutting to length, added Sta-Locs myself at the bottoms. We then set off on a round-Atlantic cruise that has just ended in France. Re-rigging was a major time/money item in my pre-cruise preparations, so I've been very disappointed to find rust, or at least brown stains, appearing on all of my stays/shrouds.

The stains vary a little in intensity from wire to wire, but they have the same characteristic spiral, as if only one or two strands at a time were affected. The spirals can be highly visible in some lights, but nearly invisible in strong sun, since the wire in general is so shiny. I've also got some rust stains collecting around the upper rims of the sta-locs. These stains come off with a bit of hard rubbing, however they appear to originate from within the wire rope, not just on the exterior.

I've attached a characteristic photo.

The people I bought the rigging from originally suggested that there are commonly contaminants in wire from the manufacturing process and that these may need a couple months to wash out in the rain. Well, we've had a lot of rain and 14 months, so that probably is a non starter.

I asked two riggers this summer to take a look, one in England and one in France, and they were both baffled.

So what is it and is it serious? I don't like to have my rig anything other than A1.

One might suspect that my wire came from a bad spool. However, my standing rigging includes three different diameters, so that would mean three different bad spools all at once -- which is a lot less likely scenario. Also, my cap shrouds come from an entirely different outlet, yet they have been affected in exactly the same way.

The sellers are checking things out with their supplier. Maybe I'll get an explanation.

I saw a discussion on this forum from some time back where Lynn Pardey mentioned volcanic dust being corrosive. We weren't near a volcano, but we did spend about five weeks in west Africa, where the rig and boat became absolutely layered in red Saharan dust. That all washed off once we began crossing to the West Indies. A couple weeks were spent in the very polluted Dakar harbor. On the other hand, I've not heard of anyone else having a problem as a result of such a short stay.

I know there are some seriously knowledgeable people on cruisersforum, so thank you in advance if you have any suggestions.

best, Sebastian (Valiant 40 'Moon River')