Okay, let’s go with wire. 5/16 all around. Now what? A thousand necessary modifications and little pieces that must all fit together is what. Not to mention the almighty Angle of the Dangle! Fun stuff re-engineering the rigging here kids. I get to try my hand at being a mathematician, a physician and, oh, a coal miner’s daughter. Enjoy!
In other news, we had a fan-TAS-tic time out on the hook for the first time. We didn’t our main sail on and a few other things not quite put back together, but she was ready enough to camp out on for the night, so we had to go! It felt incredible to be back on our boat in the water!
Now that we won’t be spending as much time in the shipyard, I will have more time to focus on putting together more awesome HaveWindWillTravel content for you all. I need to get an interview done this week to include in my next Gift of Cruising announcement video so that will come out soon! Very exciting. And, I’m planning to do another boat tour for you on Friday. The goal is to publish content that entertains, educates, inspires and helps bring more people to the water. If we’re hitting the mark, let us know!
Annie,
Good choice with the wire V rod. With the wire you can repair it yourself anywhere in the world. I have a world cruising boat in our yard now and they had to replace some of the standing rigging at a lot of locations around the world. So carrying spare wire with you and some norsmans will give you that ability. Also wire is much easier to ship if you need to. You need the toggles at all junctions to allow the wire to move and not cause any work hardening of the wire. Stainless has a low tolerance to that. This just allows the wire to always follow the motion, (there always is motion) The spreaders always (almost always, depends on the rig and how many spreaders) have an upwards angle to them to bisect the wire at the proper angle so when under tension/load the pressure is applied straight into the mast. Any other angle will put a bending force to the spreader. Drilling the holes out is OK as long as it is minimal. Load is under tension (lots) on the deck fittings, so you don’t want to change the tensile strength of the deck fitting much at all. I like that you chose to have all the same size wire. Just makes it simple. The lowers will not have as much load as the uppers. West does a good job. We always use Offshore Spars here. They are great. Their work is impeccable. Good job again on all the research you did. You’re on top of it. Feels Good doesn’t it !!!
We have soda blasted the bottoms of several boats when the bottom gets to bad. It comes out perfect for recoating. You are not there yet. Just keep scraping away Annie.
Cheers
Rick
Ahhh … good to know regarding the Angle of the Spreader! That was a definite “DOH!” moment for us after we were already knee-deep in pythagorean theorem calculations. Thanks for the tip, too, on drilling out the eyelet acceptors on the deck. We only had to drill a shade so I believe we’ll be alright (although it did make me a bit nervous). We’ve sailed the rig once now (Genny only) and she seems strong as ever. I’m excited to watch her really romp across the Gulf this coming season. Thanks for watching and providing such helpful input on the rigging end. You’re a true asset to have following along Rick!
Another fine video of work on your boat. Good decision to replace rod with wire. We did our boat a few years ago and it was well worth the expense. The thing we didn’t replace at first were the chain plates. One failed during a cruise and that resulted in an upgrade all around. Lesson learned. When you look into spare rigging, check out Dyneema. It is super strong and used on many high performance yachts and some cruisers now because it is fault tolerant and easy to store, handle and splice. Search for a guy, Herb Benavent, rigging doctor. Useful examples of things he does to his boat.
“The bottom.” How many have I stripped? A nasty job with a delightful outcome. Did my boat last year. Good work on your boat.
I appreciate the work you put into the videos. Very useful and fun. Fun is good!
Wow, thank you for the kind words Norman. Some videos really do take a lot of time to make so it’s awesome to hear you are really appreciating them. I definitely find the projects interesting and have (don’t tell anyone) sometimes missed those days at the yard! Glad you mentioned the chain plates. We looked at all of ours. While they were good, as you saw in the corrosion video, some of the backing plates were not so we definitely re-fabricated those for extra measure. I want that rig to be stronger than ever when we cross an ocean. It’s been really fun having you along for this journey. Thanks for watching!