woolamaloo
Member III
My standing rigging is original to the boat. It’s 33 years old. The rule of thumb I’ve heard is that it should be replaced every ten years in salt-water and every 20 in fresh. A sail-maker who did some work for me a couple years ago thought that this style of turnbuckles was recalled in the late-80s. He took a look at my rigging and commented that something didn’t look quite right with the intermediate shrouds.
I store my mast in a rack in the off-season and inspect the rigging closely each spring. The swages all look good and I can find no corrosion on any of the wire rope. There are certainly no fish-hooks. The only problem I’ve found is that the starboard intermediate turnbuckle stud has a slight bend in it. AND, when I get the rig tuned to what I think is right, far more threads on the starboard intermediate turnbuckle are exposed than there are on the port turnbuckle stud. Of course, this makes me think I’ve done something wrong. I’ve spent hours each year trying to tune things to make those two turnbuckles look similar. I end up with a big S-curve in my mast and end up changing it back.
It could be argued that since my boat is only in the water 7 months a year and the mast with rigging is wrapped each year, I might not have exceeded the useful life of the rig. It’s probably fine, but that’s not an argument I’d want to defend. I’ve decided to preventively replace my shrouds and stays this winter. I spent extra time in the last month of the season tuning the rig trying to make sure the mast was as centered possible. The yard workers coiled the rigging for me and I brought it all home. I’m still doing my research for the replacement.
I wanted to see how much longer my starboard intermediate was than the port one and I laid them out in the driveway. I probably shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was when they were only about a quarter inch different. I proceeded to lay out each set of shrouds and I was pretty pleased with how close each pair was. But it appears that the starboard intermediate was just made too short at the factory. Does that make sense or is there something else I’m missing?
I store my mast in a rack in the off-season and inspect the rigging closely each spring. The swages all look good and I can find no corrosion on any of the wire rope. There are certainly no fish-hooks. The only problem I’ve found is that the starboard intermediate turnbuckle stud has a slight bend in it. AND, when I get the rig tuned to what I think is right, far more threads on the starboard intermediate turnbuckle are exposed than there are on the port turnbuckle stud. Of course, this makes me think I’ve done something wrong. I’ve spent hours each year trying to tune things to make those two turnbuckles look similar. I end up with a big S-curve in my mast and end up changing it back.
It could be argued that since my boat is only in the water 7 months a year and the mast with rigging is wrapped each year, I might not have exceeded the useful life of the rig. It’s probably fine, but that’s not an argument I’d want to defend. I’ve decided to preventively replace my shrouds and stays this winter. I spent extra time in the last month of the season tuning the rig trying to make sure the mast was as centered possible. The yard workers coiled the rigging for me and I brought it all home. I’m still doing my research for the replacement.
I wanted to see how much longer my starboard intermediate was than the port one and I laid them out in the driveway. I probably shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was when they were only about a quarter inch different. I proceeded to lay out each set of shrouds and I was pretty pleased with how close each pair was. But it appears that the starboard intermediate was just made too short at the factory. Does that make sense or is there something else I’m missing?
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