Standing Rigging

//Standing Rigging

Standing Rigging

By this time of year most of the boats that are coming out for the winter are out, chocked and have been winterised.
Around half of our customers also have their rig unstepped, with the wooden masts hung up in one of our sheds and the alloy ones either on an outside rack or used as a ridge on the boat which can then be covered.
As a yard we prefer the rig to be down for the winter, especially on deep fin yacht.
When the gales start blowing in quick succession its always a worry looking at a 12m yacht standing 3m high with a big 13m wind catcher stuck on top.
The boats tend to rattle in the cradle during a blow and the cradle props need almost daily adjustment when the weather gets particularly grotty.
Couple that to hull designs that really weren’t designed to sit on dry land. Given half a chance these designs would love to wriggle free and nosedive into the dirt.

The actual process of unstepping a rig is quite easy and using our crane three of us can usually manage four or five a day.
That said a rod rigged X43 took me almost a full day to get the mast down and tidied up a few days ago.

We encourage owners to reduce their costs by removing sails, boom and pull halyards through clutches and deck organisers and pull out the locking split pins in bottle screws. Often the most complicated element is disconnecting the electrics and electronics which in many cases involves dropping the headlining, taking a number of photo’s of the connections before disconnection. All of which at least doubles the time needed to drop the rig, which at £30/hr yard cost can add up to a tidy sum.

With the rig down its an ideal opportunity to check the rigging, anchors points, spreaders, track and masthead sheaves, fittings and the like.
In my experience you won’t find much wrong with the wires, the trouble always tends to be at the terminals at either end or in the case of the cap shrouds sometimes at the spreader ends.
That is for those who have not fitted plastic shroud and/or bottle screw covers and to some extent plastic spreader end caps.
For those who insist in fitting these satanic accessories the life of the wires can be significantly reduced.
Due to the spiral nature of the wire, water, salt, crud and grime will wind its way inside the plastic cover. The wire gets coated with grime effectively sealing the inner core wires from oxygen which leads to a breakdown in the stainless steel surface protection which then leads to corrosion and failure.
The same applies to pvc coated guard wires which quite rightly have been banned by those who wish to sail the arc.
If you have plastic coated guard wires, that are there to save your life, throw them away and replace with plain stainless or at the very least strip away the plastic coating.
Just remember that Stainless Steel requires oxygen to maintain its protection qualities and anything that reduces this is an avoidable risk.
Another prime candidate for corrosion is at the spreader ends.
Most spreaders are aluminium and these often have a stainless pinch bolt clamping the alloy end piece onto the stainless wire.
Alloy and Stainless are not great together at the best of times so covering them with a plastic cap and taping them up increases the likely hood of corrosion. Yes it might save a little bit of wear on the rare occasions that you over sheet the genoa or ease the mainsail so far out that it touches the spreader end. You could try and isolate the stainless from the aluminium by using Duralac or similar coating but I’d rather make sure there were no sharp sticky-out bits and add a small wear patch on the sails in these areas, after checking if its actually really needed.

Insurance companies seem to vary their requirements for a standing rigging change.
Some say 10 years, some 8 years and some also specify a maximum sailing distance like 20,000 sailing miles.

The plain fact is that apart from spotting obvious wire damage like kinks, broken strands and cracks in terminals, its pretty much impossible to check the condition of the wire core or the internal section of a swaged terminal, which has largely led to the age limit being imposed.

I have my own rule of thumb which applies only if the rig looks in good condition.
8 years for terminals and hence wires, 12 years for bottle-screws and 16 years for chain-plates.

Stripping the mast of the old standing rigging generally only takes a few minutes, though dismantling of spreader end clamps can require wd40, patience and sometimes a bit of localised heat.
Invariably the time consuming element is stripping out the forestay from a furler spar.
Depending on the make of the furler this can take an hour or so and run the risk of ball bearings escaping in all directions. Early Furlex systems can be a pain in this respect. Pro furl systems are much easier and Harken by far the easiest.
Many of the older systems like Hood and Rotostay are no longer in production and these and others used their own terminals which are used in the lower drum bearing.
So care is needed when dismantling so that you can reuse this part and always remembering to run a mousing wire up through the spar so that the new wire can be pulled through later.
In some instances we will have to get a new terminal machined up if the old furler is to be kept.

We use Sta-lok for our wires and terminals.
We’ve used other, cheaper suppliers in the past and have regretted it 18months or so later, usually due to discoloration of the wire or chrome flaking off the bottle screws.
Sta-lok inform me that they only source their wire from KOS Wires and that the wire finishing process is simply superior to other suppliers.
I usually just coil up the wire, label it and send it off to Sta-lok where they simply reproduce using new wire and swage ends.
Normally we will also specify Chrome Bronze bottle screws as opposed to stainless steel as Stainless does tend to stiffen up making it difficult to adjust under load and can run the risk of cold welding which is not uncommon.
I would say a fair percentage of owners don’t actuality realise their bottle screws are chromed bronze, most believing that they are stainless.
Recently we changed the standing rigging on an Oyster 435 and we used the impressive new Stalok Supajust turnbuckles which have a polished 316 Stainless body with threaded bronze inserts permanently fixed in each end.
When I make up a rigging for a new mast I tend to use the Sta-lok self fit terminals at both ends and cut the wire myself from our stock.
Sta-lok terminals are very good quality, I’ve seen their impressive manufacturing facility and that gives me confidence.
They are also easy to fit once you get the hang of it and tests show that they are stronger than conventional swage and certainly stronger than the wire itself.
The fittings are more expensive than standard swage fittings but they are reusable (with a new wedge) making the next rig change much cheaper due to only requiring new wire.
Invariably you will need to use a self fit terminal for the forestay as you won’t get a swage terminal through the furler spar.

With the rig down its also time to inspect all the terminal points, spreader brackets, masthead fittings and other equipment mounts such as radar reflectors, radar, antennas and the like.
In a lot of cases the mounts at the hounds, masthead and the numerous other brackets will be using 316 stainless fittings and bolts. You really need to ensure there is adequate isolation using Duralac or another isolator, otherwise these dissimilar metals will lead to corrosion on an aluminum mast.

Check the condition of the electrical cables and light fittings.
Do not be tempted to swap the old fashioned masthead light bulbs for led’s unless the lens has been specifically designed for them.
You could find you invalidate your insurance.

Another area that is often overlooked are the halyard sheaves.
As standard they tend to be plain bearing nylon, bronze or aluminum turning on a stainless pin.
The main halyard sheave is subjected to the most wear and its well worth swapping the sheaves about to take this into account.
One small but significant upgrade is to swap the main halyard sheave out for a ball bearing variant from Harken, Ronstan, Garhauer or similar.
The difference almost always pleasantly surprises the owner as suddenly they can hoist the mainsail so much easier, often negating the use of a winch, with the only downside being that the sail drops a lot faster which can catch you out for the first few drops.
Another modification we carry out on a regular basis is to convert the main halyard into a 2:1 system.
This is especially useful for those of us who are knocking on a bit and starting to lose power in our shoulders when hauling up the main.
Essentially one end of the halyard is terminated at the top of the mast.
It passes from there through a high load block attached to the head of the sail and then back to to the top of the mast through a ball bearing sheave and down.
The downside is you have twice the length of halyard to deal with at the bottom but the up side is you are suddenly twice as strong.
It also has the benefit of allowing you to drop down to a smaller rope size, reducing friction still further.

Stepping the mast is really just a reverse of unstepping though keel stepped masts can be awkward on bigger boats as there is often very little space, the crane driver can’t see below decks and there is very likely to be lots of shiny varnished wood in the vicinity.
Oh and don’t forget to thread the mast through the saloon table on the keel stepped Victoria 38, as I managed to do, oops.

When preparing to drop the bigger rigs we usually pop up and remove the wind transducer and antennas to avoid them being damaged by the crane.

Most rigs can be craned using a strop just below the spreaders.
Twin or triple spreader rigs will usually mean we need to sling higher than the lower spreaders.

We sometimes have to draft in a bigger crane for masts over 70ft.

Shroud and bottle screw covers look nice, but…

The normally shiny stainless wire will be dirty, grimy and possibly corroded.
The bottle screws will be stiff to adjust with the chrome peeling off.

We take photos of the mast wiring before un-stepping the mast.

Once the wiring has been disconnected and the halyards and shrouds tidied the mast can be removed.

Spreader end caps look innocent and might seem like a good idea….

Removal of the spreader cap often reveals the horror beneath.

Either get used to removing and cleaning the end caps on a regular basis or find another way.

The Stalok Supajust uses a stainless body with bronze threaded inserts avoiding the dreaded cold weld seize.

These self fit terminals from Stalok are easy to fit but very strong and do allow you to open them up and inspect for corrosion or reuse them on new wire.

With the Stalok fitting opened you can inspect the condition of the wire.

With a Furlex Furler, these are the bits you need to get at.

However to get to the reusable terminal fitting you need to largely dismantle the entire furler assembly or at least so far that you may as well do it anyway and then you can inspect the races and replace the ball bearings.

The new wires for a Fisher 25 ready for fitting.
In this case the lower terminal that accepts the old Rotostay drum had to be specially machined to fit.

When the rig is stepped again you will need the right size tension gauge to set the rig up correctly.

Occasionally even though we spend a fair time on the ground getting all the lines organised, we still have to run up the mast to re route an errant halyard that mysteriously got the wrong side of the spreaders during the hoist.

2017-11-28T19:05:38+00:00