Listen to your rigger

Suzanne Giesemann tells why she always listens to her rigger.

We recently spent a couple of weeks in a boat yard getting some great upgrades done to Liberty. Before getting started on the jobs we wanted to have done, Mike Meer, a professional rigger, came aboard and gave us a courtesy rigging inspection. My husband, Ty, regularly inspects our rigging himself, but he was more than happy to have a pair of expert eyes take a look.

Mike told us that one of the main challenges he faces is owners who don’t know their boat’s rigging history. That wasn’t a problem for us: We knew Liberty had had a nearly complete refit in 2001, including replacing all of the standing rigging except the mast and boom.

While we’ve put a lot of miles on her in the nearly seven years we’ve owned her, the rigging has stood up quite well.

Mike confirmed this, but zeroed right in on the bronze eye jaw toggles attached to the chainplates at the bottom of the forestay and backstay. “These look like original equipment,” he said. “You really should replace them.”

“Sounds good to me,” Ty replied.

Here we go

Meanwhile, I’m thinking, “Here we go,” as I pictured endless dollar bills floating toward the shore. Okay, so they were 28 years old and they sort of helped to hold the mast up. The bronze fittings looked pretty solid to me.

I would soon find out that my instinctual reaction was both unfair and uninformed: Unfair, because Mike didn’t make a thousand costly recommendations as I’d expected; and uninformed, because I hadn’t read Richard Henderson’s Understanding Rigs and Rigging multiple times from cover to cover like Ty had (his bedtime reading, along with Hinz’ Complete Book of Anchoring).

It took the riggers mere minutes to replace the eye jaw toggles with shiny new stainless-steel ones, forged, not cast like bronze. Once removed, it didn’t take an expert to see that what was supposed to be a round hole in the fitting had taken on a very slight oval shape. This falls into the category of what Ty and I commonly refer to as “N.G.” (Not Good). Also N.G. was the crevice corrosion on the stainless-steel clevis pin that came out of that slightly oval hole. Did I mention that these two pieces helped to hold up our mast?

Sudden impacts

Mike turned out to be a really nice guy, and a heck of a lot of fun to talk to once he started sharing his eye-opening collection of rigger’s stories... like the one about the guy who took his father’s 45-footer out for a weekend sail and ran it into the main span of a bridge. This resulted in what riggers refer to as “nautical deceleration trauma” — a great euphemism for damaging your rig by quickly coming to an unexpected stop against a solid object.

The errant son took dad’s boat right over to the experts at the rigging shop and pleaded, “Can you fix this by the weekend before my father finds out?”

Lest you think this was some 20-something kid run amok with his father’s sailboat, think again. The guy was in his forties. He had the riggers replace the damaged antenna and exchange the anchor light with a fancy new LED one so he could tell his dad he’d bought him a Christmas present!

It turns out people run their boats into bridges more often than you’d think. It’s not just a case of them not checking the height of tide and bridge height against their mast height, it’s often simply impatience. One guy was in too much of a hurry to wait until a drawbridge was opened all the way before he charged on through. Duh.

Mike told us that his wife once said, “If it weren’t for bridges and fools, you’d be out of a job.”

Ouch.

Not smart

I don’t like to refer to anyone as a fool, but after looking at some of Mike’s photos of boats whose owners ignored their rigger’s advice, I would have to at least say that they weren’t very smart.

“People don’t listen,” Mike said. “We’ll tell them, ‘You need to fix this. You can see the crack.’ And many times the client will wave off the advice and say, ‘Oh, it’ll be okay. It’s been like that for a while.’”

I hope that kind of answer shocks you as much as it did me. If not, how about this one: “It’s okay. I only sail in 15 knots of wind.” Yikes.

The single-hander of a 46-foot sloop had many small jobs done by the pros over the years, and each time he was in the yard his rigger advised him that he really needed to replace his 20-year-old rigging. They warned him repeatedly over a six-year period. And did he listen? I wouldn’t be telling this story if he had.

Lucky for him, he was only a few miles from a marina when a cap shroud popped and his mast broke in half. The wind, by the way, was “only” blowing 15 knots.

Crevice corrosion

The unseen rig killer is often crevice corrosion. Once you see a crack, it’s really too late. At that point you’re living on borrowed time. Moisture combined with heat is what frequently causes cracks and corrosion. The saltier and hotter the climate, the faster your rig will break down.

So what is the life expectancy of a boat’s rigging? According to a brochure published by Navtec, a rigging solutions company, a rig’s life expectancy, based solely on climate variables, is 5-10 years in areas where heat and water salinity are at a maximum, 10-15 years where heat and water salinity are at medium levels, and 15-20 years in fresh water.

But there are several other variables to consider besides climate:

• The amount of time and/or miles your boat has been sailed.
• The kind of loads put on the rig.
• The predominant sailing conditions.
• The amount of care and maintenance given to the rigging.

Maintenance

As for care and maintenance, that starts with the boat’s owners. According to the professionals, you should personally inspect your rigging at the very least once a year or before every major passage. Do a walk-around of your boat, starting with the lifelines. Make sure the stanchions, bow pulpit and stern rail are solidly affixed to the deck. Look at the lifeline fittings, checking for discoloration where the vinyl meets the swage. Look for cracks around the swages. Then do the same thing with your standing rigging. Look for cracks and discoloration at all fittings. It’s critical to pull any shroud covers and make sure they’re not holding dirt and moisture against the wire.

Make sure all cotter pins are bent properly. Riggers recommend only bending the long side of the pin to about 17 degrees.  Should your rig come down, you’ll want to be able to release it in a hurry. If you can’t cut the shrouds, you should be able to yank out the cotter pins in a hurry, rather than fussing with a bunch of curlicues.

An often overlooked item to check for is that all clevis pins are appropriately sized for the holes they fill. A ½-inch pin for a 5/8-inch hole is a bad fit and will not be up to the full strength of the wire.

Moving on to the mast, look for dissimilar metal corrosion and cracking in welds. Check gooseneck toggles, looking again for appropriately sized pins, dissimilar metal corrosion, and cracks. Go up the mast in a bosun’s chair and make sure the inboard spreader ends are solidly attached to the mast with no corrosion. Grab the outboard spreader end and give it a good yank. It shouldn’t move more than a degree or two where it’s connected to the mast.

At the mast head make sure all halyards exit fairly and that you have the right kind of sheaves for your halyards: wire sheaves for wire and rope sheaves for rope halyards. If you have a headsail furler, make sure the halyard doesn’t run parallel to the headstay as it exits the sheave box. It should be deflected with a halyard restrainer to prevent halyard wrap.

Check all shrouds

Check all shrouds from top to bottom. Any wire with even one broken strand should be replaced. Finally, check your running rigging for wear and chafe. Salt can abrade lines internally, so give them a nice fresh water bath at least once a season.

You can become pretty proficient at checking things yourself, but nothing beats having a pro go over everything once in a while. They’ll tell you to call in the experts every one to two years. How often you do so is up to you, but once they come aboard, unless you want to become a rigger’s sea story, it’s a good idea to heed their advice.

Sure, riggers are businessmen. They want to sell you new gear, but they also want to ensure you have an uneventful passage. Listen to your rigger. It’s one thing if a mast breaks and falls off. It’s another thing if it puts a hole in the side of the boat or hurts somebody when it falls.

And that is one of the things I like about Cruising Helmsman magazine: They don’t sugar coat things. They publish stories about potential problems like dismastings and running into bridges, because we all know these things can happen to anyone. Armed with good information, we can take proper care of our boats and at least sleep better knowing that we’ve done the best we can to stay safe.

Suzanne is a veteran sailor and the author of Living a Dream (newly released by Paradise Cay Publications) and It’s Your Boat Too: A woman’s Guide to Greater Enjoyment on the Water. Visit the Giesemann’s website at www.libertysails.com for more information.