Riggers want to replace my furlers!

[Capdave360]

Originally Posted by chrisr

you are kidding, right ? the rigging is 27 years old and you are concerned about replacing it ?

how do you know "Rigging is in perfect condition, shows no wear" ? have you been over it with a magnifying glass...or just stood on the deck and looked up at the mast ?.

imho any rig which is 27 yrs old will have a host of issues and should have been replaced at least 10 years ago.

as for the furlers : 60'+ is a big lump of boat. do you really want to risk your gear failing ? how are you going to deal with things if it does ? long experience has taught me that stuff will always fail at the worst time so my advice is don't be a cheapskate and try to cut corners...do it once and do it RIGHT...

if you don't trust your rigger, why are you using him ?

cheers,

This is the correct response. You are inviting disaster, especially on a cat with shock loading. Just start over, don't overthink it. If you literally can't afford it, you bought too big a boat, sorry.

[DumnMad]

Originally Posted by chrisr

you are kidding, right ? the rigging is 27 years old and you are concerned about replacing it ?

how do you know "Rigging is in perfect condition, shows no wear" ? have you been over it with a magnifying glass...or just stood on the deck and looked up at the mast ?.

imho any rig which is 27 yrs old will have a host of issues and should have been replaced at least 10 years ago.
cheers,

Do we know how much stress the rig's been under and whether in the tropics, cold wet climate or on the great lakes ??? Do the wire end joints have residual stress in them or low stress ? Are there signs of internal corrosion or not ?
Stainless rigging durability is affected by stress, temperature, salinity and presence or lack of oxygen.

The ignorant have to follow mindless rules but a skilled and experienced rigger should be able to give evidence and reasons for upgrading.

[Tupaia]

[QUOTE=CaptBobR;3247416]

Originally Posted by Tupaia

Do you know what parts are required?
Have you tried sourcing those parts yourself?
It is often a case of the riggers "usual" supplier not harving them rather than them not being available at all. The rigger may not sell Harken therefore not have a good supply chain for their parts.

Contact Harken HQ and find out if the parts are no longer available.


Not that it will bother you but if you need to replace Profurl use commercially available seals and bearings not specific to Profurl.[/QUOTE

As a rigger you are asking for lots of potentially serious issues if you do this and don’t know what you’re doing

Don't get your meaning, If the OP can source the parts for his rigger to fit where is the issue. If you want to be sure the parts are obsolete the best people to ask is the manufacturer, then you are down to sourcing new old stock something the rigger probably does not have the time or inclination to do.

[Capdave360]

Originally Posted by DumnMad

Do we know how much stress the rig's been under and whether in the tropics, cold wet climate or on the great lakes ??? Do the wire end joints have residual stress in them or low stress ? Are there signs of internal corrosion or not ?
Stainless rigging durability is affected by stress, temperature, salinity and presence or lack of oxygen.

The ignorant have to follow mindless rules but a skilled and experienced rigger should be able to give evidence and reasons for upgrading.

Boat has been in the Caribbean for quite some time, been for sale for years:

https://www.yachtworld.com/boats/199...om-61-3695703/

Most expensive thing in the world is a cheap big boat.

That gang of wire is toast. Furlers - if you can do it all, completely all, yourself, fine. Otherwise, the labor costs more than the parts, after you pay to completely remove, disassemble, repair, reassemble, and reinstall them you still have 27 year old machines. At that point it's wiser to start over and invest the cost of that labor in new furlers.

I almost never rebuild anything on my boat that's seriously broken - I just buy a new one, exactly for these reasons. One day I'll go to sell the boat, and instead of a bunch of warmed over antiques, the boat will be full of newer current gear in great condition with parts available.

[aerocanard]

We can purchase the HFG-118 and HFG-119 from Harken. Pretty pricey. We have also made these from Hyne's threaded eye milled with flat sides and DJT's
Cut the cost x4 times less than the Harken parts.

Jeff Russell / Mack Sails
Stuart Florida.

[capn_billl]

I can only go with my own experience.

Once the new forestay is swaged into the furler, the only way to replace it is to cut the forestay, and run a new one.

There are spacers/bearings in the furler that wear, and can bind untwisting your forestay that is the only thing holding your mast up.

I tried to reuse my old furler, (only 10 years old). midway through re rigging we found several issues, by the time I replaced the bad parts I was well on the way to paying for a new one.

If I had to do it over again, I would just have put a new furler on from the beginning. That way I can pick the brand, and model, and know I have a fresh woorking rig, with no worries about cutting a new forestay to replace it.

[RaymondR]

If I've pressed all the right buttons and clicked on the right tabs a screenshot of a graph should appear herein.

In inspection of the graph will identify that below certain stress levels (left hand side in ksi or thousands of psi) the fatigue life of the material (in this case SS expressed as number of cycles on the x axis) is infinite. That is that below certain levels of cyclic stress no damage occurs to the material. And it's a little above 10,000 psi.

If I was a reputable manufacturer (which I suspect Harken is) I would design the durable components (the drum mechanism) such that the stress levels imposed by the cyclic stresses in the consumable components (the wire) stayed below the curve and consequently had a working life not limited by fatigue. ie the durable components always stayed below the working stress life limits of the consumable components.

This design philosophy underpinned the type of calculations exampled in my previous post.