Standing Rigging Replacement - How Frequently?

[Ramona]

Professional riggers are running a business in a limited market. There are not that many new yachts being built. They need people to replace their rigs on a regular basis. Just how often can they convince people their rigs need replacing? Pick a number.
The rig on my boat was replaced in 2013 but it looks like it was done last week!

[mitiempo]

Originally Posted by Ramona

Professional riggers are running a business in a limited market. There are not that many new yachts being built. They need people to replace their rigs on a regular basis. Just how often can they convince people their rigs need replacing? Pick a number.
The rig on my boat was replaced in 2013 but it looks like it was done last week!

The wire in my rig looks good as well. It is original from 1977. The issue is mostly not the wire but the swages, particularly the lower ones. You can never tell what is happening in there.

I am replacing my rigging with 316 stainless and Hayn HiMods on the lower end, swages on the upper end.

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by joelhemington

Check out You tube GBU. I think Matt ended up spending more on cleaning solvents to combat the rust stains than he saved. Apparently he found galvanized to be a bad idea.

That's why your supposed to wipe it down with an oily rag at least once a year.. in the tropic every 6mths would probably be better.. simple enough. If you have a furler use stainless for that.
Had a boat with galv rigging in the UK for a couple of years, no rust stain problems.. anyway rust is a doddle to remove and cheap, just don't buy yacht products from chandlers.
Go to a hardware store instead... over here there's something called Ferronet.. paint some on with a half inch brush, wait 30seconds to a minute then wash off with fresh water and rewax the patch..
He says he'll redo it the same way with stainless next time, someone please tell him you can't make eyes with stainless.. it don't like bends.

[billgewater]

Why the absence of discussion regarding synthetic rigging? Is there any difference with the 10 year insurance doodle?

Synthetic rigging is now taking a big slice of the rigging scene depending on which country you are in, so any anecdotes or rulings may be interesting to those considering moving to synthetic rigging.

For the cruising fraternity, synthetic rigging has the property that you can carry a long length of the material in a bag. You can do all the splicing etc. on your boat at sea. No special tools required, so it would seem to me that cruisers should be considering using it in preference to SS, rod or galvanized rigging.

[boatman61]

At the end of the day, you need to ask yourself: "What do you find most important?" and "What downfalls are you willing to work with?"

Metal rigging offers set-it-and-forget-it rig tuning, but suffers from corrosion, high weight, and requires special tools to repair.

Synthetic rigging offers corrosion free, light weight, and ease of repairing; but high windage and will need frequent tuning throughout its life.

What do you value most in your rigging?

[pushstudios]

There was a recent article in Sail mag regarding Dyneema rigging. One of it's strengths is that it isn't supposed to stretch much after it's been 'pre-stretched'. Tensile strength is supposed to be much higher than ss.

Has anyone heard any pros or cons about it?

[jacktheflyer]

My current experience in Australia. I have a boat that is 12yrs old and when reinsuring the company asked to have an inspection report for the rigging before they would insure. When I asked the local riggers they said an inspection report could be done for about $350. BUT because it was older than 10yrs they would sign off the report saying it was past its serviceable life. Therefore the only way to satisfy the insurance company was to replace it.

[chrisr]

further along the insurance line (and only applicable if you need / want insurance) is the issue that you are obliged under all policies to maintain the vessel properly

without rig inspection / rig replacement it's very easy for the ins co to deny a claim on the basis that you have failed to maintain the vessel.

(of course depends on the exact circumstances of the claim)

cheers,

[Joli]

I think it really depends on the situation you find yourself in. Prior to cruising full time we were on the Great Lakes where we sailed in fresh water with a short season. The spar maker disassembled the rigging, die checked it and said we were fine for the sailing we were doing. Today we sail year round, in Caribbean and East Coast waters and sail 5~10,000 miles a year. A ten year replacement schedule seems realistic given the environment and annual miles we now sail.

[Atcowboy]

Originally Posted by Cheechako

The Insurance requirement seems to come up over and over... I have NEVER had an insurance company even bring it up, at all. How many here have had them ask? (without asking)
Even if they did ask they wouldn't be smart enough to question chainplates.

Just curious? ... maybe it's the latest thing...

How expensive is your boat? Mine was 41 years young with an agreed value of I believe 6k through Geico, and they didn't ask me. I believe if it was 41 with an agreed value of 600k, they would have.

I have every reason to believe my rigging was 41 years old when I bought the boat last spring. I had new rigging by late summer. I hastily put it on to try to sail South for the winter but that didn't happen. Kind of wish I'd taken my time and gone dyneema.

Merool's rigging (free-range sailing) looks beautiful.

I don't think that regular replacement of rigging is anything new. It's long been known that SS is particularly susceptible to stress fractures and crevice corrosion. My guess is the OP lived in a sailing "bubble" similar to my marina. Whenever I mentioned to someone my intent to replace my rigging, or pointed out something on theirs, it was generally met with incredulity. I think the small NE ports in cold water with boats that sail 3-6 hours a month, well they just run it till it breaks which can be a very long time....

- AT

[Atcowboy]

Originally Posted by boatman61

For smaller boats up to 36ft this makes sense, it's cheaper, can easily be diy as it's flexible so no complicated fittings just a bottle screw and eyes.. its only fault as such is in the old days when it was in common use it used to leave oil/rust marks on white sails hence most sails were tan colored to make it less obvious... they used to wipe down the wire once a year with linseed oil to help stop the heart drying out.
Today one can get plastic coated wire but how long that stands up to the sun is likely less than the 40+ yr lifespan of the wire.

Plastic coated wire is impossible to inspect and the plastic occludes oxygen from the wire, which will cause crevice corrosion from lack of oxygen.

I sailed my 41 year old boat with 41 year old plastic coated life lines once before they got the boot. Again, no one at my marina understood why I wanted them gone but if I get hurled into my life lines I want them to stop me.

- AT

[Atcowboy]

Originally Posted by Jahwork

Greetings,

I am curious if anyone has knowledge of how the 10 year replacement cycle timeline was adopted? I see many people say you should replace it for peace of mind and to be conservative as it relates to safety. No argument from me on either of those accounts. But why 10 years? Why not 9 years? Maybe 8? Wouldn’t replacing it very 5 years be safer? Perhaps every year? I hear this 10 year value in many conversations but have not found anyone that can explain to me how and why it exists. Is it an average? From earlier posts I see one opinion was that a rig in the tropics will last 7 years but the same rig in colder water environments lasts 15-18 years. Based on a very small sampling, I suppose you could deduce the 10 year replacement is simply an “average” of the above numbers. Is it ten years of use? If I have a spool of 316SS 1x19 wire in my shop, which I do, and it is 5 years old, which it is, and I install it on my sailboat, is my rig now only good for 5 years? What, where, and how is the 10 year time limit calculated? As someone suggested before, if a boat has its rig removed X months of each year does the rig last “longer?” Is my rig bad after 10 years of use? Is my rig bad after 10 years of storage? If one’s rig were to fail, is there a metallurgic test that can be conducted to determine the age of a failed component? As I queried above, is the age of rigging calculated on the manufacture date of the component or when it was placed into service? Has anyone who has experienced a failed rig had to either prove the rig was less than 10 years old or had the insurance company age test the failed rig, found it to be in excess of 10 years old, and deny a claim as a result?

I also hear many speak of the fact that the failures occur in the fittings where they cannot be easily inspected, if possible at all. So how much time does it take for a fitting to corrode and weaken sufficiently so as to present a failure risk? Does the size of the rigging/fitting matter? Can it fail in a year if the conditions are such as to promote rapid corrosion? 5 years? Is this how the 10 year value came in to being? If it can’t be inspected then, as pondered above, wouldn’t a replacement schedule of 1, 2, ,5 or 7 years be “safer” than a 10 year cycle?

After all this writing, I am left with many more questions than I am answers. Oddly enough I have found “professional” riggers not in agreement on this, as well, and provide me with suggested replacement cycles from 7 years to 20+ years based on inspection.

Thanks for any and all insight you might provide,
~Jake

Jake,
There was a nice YouTube video by a Brit about inspecting your rigging. It was a video made of a conference/lesson he was teaching. Lots of good stuff. His biggest talking point was about FREQUENT inspection, like all the time. Just look over your rig as often as you can. Pulling up the anchor? Just look over the forestay. Need to get a halyard back? Inspect the shrouds on the way up. BBQ in the pushpit? Give the aft stay a gander. I don't keep a log but deck level items probably don't go a week without my hands on them and I like to look at the mast head with my binoculars every once in a while. That's on a rig that isn't a year old yet.

- AT

[Atcowboy]

Originally Posted by pushstudios

There was a recent article in Sail mag regarding Dyneema rigging. One of it's strengths is that it isn't supposed to stretch much after it's been 'pre-stretched'. Tensile strength is supposed to be much higher than ss.

Has anyone heard any pros or cons about it?

Aluminum spars shrink as they cool and dyneema expands as it cools. Large temperature swings can be problematic. Say you had a big cold front come in with nasty weather that dropped the temp significantly, you'd have lose stays. It just seems like something you need to be more in tune with.

Rigging doctor describes being off I believe Hatteras with their anchor chaffing the forestay and the temperate change making him worry about being hard on the rigging. Like maybe not feeling confident in heaving-to?

I think it sounds great for warm waters or those that like to tinker. But I'd hate to be in shït weather and have to try to stiffen up my rigging.

- AT

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by Atcowboy

Jake,
There was a nice YouTube video by a Brit about inspecting your rigging. It was a video made of a conference/lesson he was teaching. Lots of good stuff. His biggest talking point was about FREQUENT inspection, like all the time. Just look over your rig as often as you can. Pulling up the anchor? Just look over the forestay. Need to get a halyard back? Inspect the shrouds on the way up. BBQ in the pushpit? Give the aft stay a gander. I don't keep a log but deck level items probably don't go a week without my hands on them and I like to look at the mast head with my binoculars every once in a while. That's on a rig that isn't a year old yet.

- AT

That's why I like to wander round on deck underway.. mix a bit of exercise with a quick once over.. same with peeing over the side by the stays, when you look down to check your feet are clear give the swages and turnbucklie a quick glance..
Who wants to be cocooned in the cockpit for days on end.

[wesevans]

Do not forget your chain plates. they are subject to oxygen starvation corrosion and stress where they go through the deck.