I was interested to to discover whilst reading the recent posts, that there are lots of Vegas with 30-40 year old rigging and found that there are lots of similarly rigged yachts here in Marmaris - one of which is enroute to Thailand!
I replaced Spring Fever's in 2001 and upsized it to 6mm at the same time; I'd been thinking that it may soon be time to do it again, but am now reconsidering that decision.
I've also just been looking at a 32 foot homebuilt steel yacht from Serbia and noticed that the owner's fitted safety lines on the standing rigging: His contention (which fits with my limited experience) is that rigging failures are either the fittings or the wire breaking where it joins the bottom fitting. To provide some protection against the latter, he's taken lengths of hi-tech (Dyneema?) ropes and lashed them around the standing rigging about 30cm above the lower fitting - he used a prussic loop, with about 6 loops/12 turns around the wire - the tied the other ends to the deck eye, these lines are fairly tight, but not actually taking any rigging loads. The theory is that if the standing rigging was to fail, these lines would hopefully keep the mast upright until he could effect a more permanent or at least secure repair - besides a spare length of new rigging wire, he also carries a couple of Norseman type fittings which are 50mm longer than
normal, the intention being that he could in the first instance, cut a clean end on the broken wire, fit one of these extended terminals and simply re-tighten the broken standing rigging, without going up the mast to change the whole thing whilst at sea. it all seemed very sensible to me, but as its not something I've seen anywhere else, I'm presuming that there's a flaw with these ideas?
Anyone like to suggest what they are?
Bob Carlisle
Spring Fever 1776.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
I replaced Spring Fever's in 2001 and upsized it to 6mm at the same time; I'd been thinking that it may soon be time to do it again, but am now reconsidering that decision.
I've also just been looking at a 32 foot homebuilt steel yacht from Serbia and noticed that the owner's fitted safety lines on the standing rigging: His contention (which fits with my limited experience) is that rigging failures are either the fittings or the wire breaking where it joins the bottom fitting. To provide some protection against the latter, he's taken lengths of hi-tech (Dyneema?) ropes and lashed them around the standing rigging about 30cm above the lower fitting - he used a prussic loop, with about 6 loops/12 turns around the wire - the tied the other ends to the deck eye, these lines are fairly tight, but not actually taking any rigging loads. The theory is that if the standing rigging was to fail, these lines would hopefully keep the mast upright until he could effect a more permanent or at least secure repair - besides a spare length of new rigging wire, he also carries a couple of Norseman type fittings which are 50mm longer than
normal, the intention being that he could in the first instance, cut a clean end on the broken wire, fit one of these extended terminals and simply re-tighten the broken standing rigging, without going up the mast to change the whole thing whilst at sea. it all seemed very sensible to me, but as its not something I've seen anywhere else, I'm presuming that there's a flaw with these ideas?
Anyone like to suggest what they are?
Bob Carlisle
Spring Fever 1776.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]