Rigging Repairs

Ron Uryga the rigger visited Pachuca today with a recent solo sailor arrival Jeff and a Kiwi Len assisting him. They installed the new inner forestay then Ron went up the mast to make an inspection and drop the headstay.

You may recall that we had sailed into Hilo from Tahiti without the inner forestay which had fallen apart at the lower crimp fitting, so we were running a pure sloop rig relying heavily on the headstay. A few weeks ago I while I was at the top of the mast removing the wind vane I had noticed a broken strand at the top of the headstay. Ron agreed that this was not good so we agreed to replace the headstay.

Today while Ron at the top of the mast while Jeff and Len were loosening the lower part of the Profurl roller furler he heard the "ping" of another breaking wire brought on, no doubt, by the flexing and agitation of the removal work below. Then he heard another "ping", then another. The headstay was about to fall off. So it looks like we were very, Very, VERY lucky to make it to Oahu without losing our mast. Had the headstay failed it is likely that the mast would have fallen back, smashing the cabin, pushpit, solar panels, wind generator, radio & GPS antennas, probably ripping itself off the compression post, and ruining the radar scanner. Assuming that neither Arnold nor I had been brained in the process we would have had one hell of a mess of sails, mast, and rigging everywhere. The really spooky part is that had we not been able to find a berth in Ala Wai were were provisioned to attempt the sail to Seattle during the winter months, and we would not have made it.

I had the boat re-rigged in late October 2005, shortly after I purchased Pachuca, by the best rigger in WA. That makes the rigging just over 3 years old. LLoyds Insurance requires stainless steel rigging to be renewed every 10 years, which gives an indication of the sort of life to expect from the rigging. Ron says that the inner forestay was so corroded that they checked with magnets to make sure that the wire was stainless steel. (It was.) He said that he could give the reason for the failure with one word. I preempted him with the word: China. He said yes, China. They've been getting failures of rigging around Hawaii in as little as 6 months. According to him some batches of wire out of China are just plain bad. My reply was how could that be if it is all supposed to be to 316 standard? He said that the 316 dictates the alloy mix
(See http://www.azom.com/details.asp?ArticleID=863#_Composition) but if the metals are not blended correctly you wind up with streaks of corrosion-prone material within the wire, which leads to the problems.

Ron could not see anything obviously wrong with the rest of the rigging but as he said, he doesn't have X-Ray eyes. He thinks that if the inner and head stays were from a bad batch it is likely that the rest of the rigging is also bad. He will show the headstay to his wire supplier and come back with a recommendation regarding the rest of the rigging.

The news was not all bad. We've been heaving a terrible time using our halyards to raising the jib and spinnaker. It was so bad that the last time we raised the jib I had to climb half way up the mast to help things along. I was convinced that the sheaves had seized up. Happily, the sheaves are working fine. The problem was that the halyard was being jammed under the headstay because of the way things were connected up there. Ron plans to simplify the setup by removing two extension plates held together by tangs.

Photos are of Ron going up the rig, the failed upper terminus of the headstay, and the three working taking the Profurl furler apart on the jetty.