Midseason Rigging Maintenance
To most of us, summer is the time for sailing. When the Florida sun sends the mercury up to the 90s, it is not a favorite time for a major boat project. Farther north, sailors may spend the winter and spring on boat projects, but the day the boat goes over the side, work is forgotten, and the fun begins. The season seems too short to squander on chores. As a rule, midseason maintenance is fairly painless. Unless you find some big problem, smaller, low-budget repairs can prevent a larger investment down the line.
Rig
Nothing can bring a sailing season to a halt faster than losing a rig, and most rigs are lost through preventable failures of rigging components. Spending an hour on a midseason checkup should be sufficient for detecting weakened or damaged rigging or fittings.
First, check the tension of the rig at rest. Wire standing rigging continues to stretch in use, so the rig you carefully tuned in June could be quite slack by August. If you were careful in setting up the rig at the beginning of the season, and now find one piece significantly looser than the others, you may have trouble afoot. Do not just retighten the loose stay or shroud without examining it from the chainplate to the mast tang. A chainplate may be working loose; an unpinned turnbuckle may be loosening when the lee shrouds are slack; the wire may be pulling out of the swage; the mast tangs could be distorting at the clevis pin holes; or the tang bolt could be pulling down into the mast.
Check to see that all cotter pins are still in place, and that those in turnbuckles are positioned so that the turnbuckle cannot turn. Aloft, check all tang attachments, looking carefully for cracks in the mast tube or for distortion around clevis-pin holes. These checks also should be made any time the boat has gone through exceptionally heavy weather, as rigging loads increase dramatically under these conditions.
Examine spreader-end taping for worn spots or protruding seizing wire, and check the inboard ends of the spreaders for cracks and distortions. Remember, a spreader is designed to be in pure compression. Any deviation from bisecting the angle made by the shroud where it passes over the end of the spreader introduces improper loading. Spreader failure is one of the major causes of the rig going over the side.
If you have over-the-headstay roller furling, it is extremely important to check the headstay for signs of unlaying, both at the top and at the bottom. A headstay that partially unlays as the sail is rolled out or up not only gets longer, slackening the rig, but loses strength. The individual strands in 1×19 wire were pre-formed, and straightening them will quickly cause work-hardening, dramatically reducing strength.
For more tips on proactive maintenance, purchase Beth Leonard’s The Voyager’s Handbook, 2nd edition today!
