I only have the backstay and forestay to install, IF the anchorage is not to rolly. If I can do it, I should be able to take Shanti on a tune up sail monday.

So far:

This has been a measurement nightmare. The BCC is overbuilt. So her chainpaltes are oversized. So hardly any of the rigging pieces (deadeyes) fit. I have had to use Link plates many places. So that meant a lot of new clevis pins. Could not find any the proper size on the island, so they had to be ordered. And on and on….

Above are the 3 sizes I have used. 7mm Dynex Dux for the shrouds. 9mm for the stays, and an 11mm piece for the bobstay.

My complete rig for Shanti. Weighs about as much as one of my intermediates.

My rigging kit. Note the tin snips for cutting the Dynex. Pretty simple.

When I was installing one of the cap shrouds I had a bit of a problem. The wind was blowing pretty good. I had hoisted up the new shroud and attached it to the mast. but the wind kept blowing it out away from the boat. This stuff was so light…LOL.    very strange…

I am actually attaching my lowers in this photo. Used very nice custom mast tangs Eric Precourt made for me to accommodate the two larger thimbles the dynex requires.

A nice benefit to my 2 part halyard with a larger self tailer that I installed for my furler. My girlfriend (Deb) can easily haul my butt up the mast.

Another custom plate for the rigging. This holds the aft-lower and the intermediate. I have also decided to use some all black NE Ropes V-100 for the lashings. A little bit harder to tighten up, but not that bad with a little water for lube. This line has a vectran core that has low stretch like the Dynex does. Plus it looks so niiice….

You know what they say?

If you can’t sail good, you should at least look good!

More after the sail.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends … 

Or at least that what it feels like with this project. I installed my first pieces of rigging yesterday as a test. Measuring is a bit of a challenge. First you need good measurements. I started out using the factory measurements, but it appears mine is not standard. Easy enough to remedy, just measure your rig before you start. Oh, and don’t forget to add in the bury part of the splice for BOTH ends. I didn’t and it cost me another $300 to buy more line for my longest pieces. The hard part is figuring out how to set your measurements. when you do the splice the piece will shrink considerably. But then some of that will stretch out when the piece is set up taught. I will have more details on this when I am finished. 

My initial impressions so far: 

1) Forget about the mad Haitian with a machete, this stuff is TOUGH. Could not even faze it with a large pair of scissors or a very sharp knife. I had to use tin snips to cut it, and even that is not easy. 

2) Very stiff to begin with, but softens up when fiddled with. 

3) Splicing is easy as far as type goes, but it is time consuming. Also your hands will get sore if you try to many at once. On a scale of 1-5 with swaged fittings by a rigging shop a 1 and wire eye splices a 5, I would rate this a 3. 

4) The most difficult part is getting the measurements right.

Ahhhh….feels good to be back out in the breeze with my hatches scooping up air! Between the rain and the heat I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to. But I did get the main purpose of the dock time finished, which was the modification of the bowsprit for my new furler system.

Shanti at the dock, Yacht Haven Grand

I have taken off the bow rollers and reshaped the sprit all the way back to the gammon iron. I had to remove the cranes iron to fit on the bowsprit traveler. I also installed some brass half round on the bottom of the sprit for the traveler to ride on under tension. Completely re varnished and painted the sprit using Honey Teak, and white Easypoxy.

"new" bowsprit

Bowsprit traveler

Brass half round installed.

While I was at it I decided to also refinish the sampson posts, as they were checking pretty badly. Used the Honey teak on them also. It will be interesting how the Honey Teak holds up with abrasion from lines. Being a 2 part epoxy type system I think it will do well. Couldn’t get the ash to clean up well without a LOT of sanding. So I used a mahogany stain under the Hoeny teak.

Samson posts ... BEFORE

Sampson posts ... AFTER

While I was on the dock I did some other maintenence. I stripped the main hatch and varnished it with the Honey teak. I left the planking natural and oiled it. I have never used oil before so we will see how much up keep it requires. I don’t like varnishinh over deck caulking as the varnish ALWAYS cracks then the whole job goes to hell real fast. So we will see. Also, the companion way trim,  eyebrow and tiller were striped. I still need to varnish those, but thats next weekend.

Main hatch stripped and ready for sanding/varnish

Done!

Sanding and stripping (without a pole!)

I mentioned in an earlier post that my staineless was nearing the end of it’s life. The rig is 20 years old. I was seeing a lot of rusting no matter how much I cleaned and polished. Here is a shackle for my stays’l halyard. I would guess that is the orginal from when Shanti was built. While de-rigging the sprit, this shackle literaly fell apart. You can see it right at the pivot pin. A big reason to start re-rigging and closely watching my chain plates now … god I hate stainless. Give me bronze ANY day. Also another reason for the new synthetic rigging.

Disintigrated stainless steel shackle

Heres Shanti patiently waiting for the rest of the hardware for her new furler and synthetic rigging. Charlotte Amalie Harbor, St. Thomas.

Back on the mooring.

Now I have to take my jib, lapper and drifter to the sailmaker here for modification. This will included an anti-torsion, low strecth luff line. my next post will cover this and the installation of the furler.

Now to go have some fun today at Honeymoon Beach. Maybe even drink to excess … hic!

Another big change to Shanti besides the rigging will be a furler for the headsails.

Using a second sail like a drifter or storm jib etc with a foil/furler is not an easy solution. You either have to change the sail on the foil, set it flying or just use your engine (ugh). That is one of the reasons I have stuck with hanked on sails for so long. But the sprit on the BCC is just a tad to long to work out on easily, particularly in heavy weather. Of course I don’t see other boats changing out their sails on their furlers on a regular basis either.

I was on a cruise in the Sea of Cortez with my engineless Falmouth Cutter years ago. I had a jib, tri-radial drifter and a cruising chute. It was a great combo for just about any wind situation. I remember all the “cruisers” grumbling about there was not enough wind to sail. A number of us were going further north, about a 20 mile sail. Of course the next morning the winds were light and everyone took off under power. Except me. I set my drifter and was off on admittedly slow sail. The beer was cold and the trip was easy. I arrived last by about only an hour and a half, and got to sail the whole way on a beautiful day. I like to sail, thats why I have a “sail”boat. The sail all the cruisers had on their RF were to heavy for the light air. And I didn’t see anyone change or set flying a drifter.

I’m lucky that I don’t have a “standard” furler yet. So the cost of dumping it will not prevent me from doing something a little different. Although it’s not really that different, just different from todays norm.

This is going to be another example of a “new/old paradigm crossovers”. I will be going back to using a bowsprit traveler (ring, this one here ). On this traveler I will be mounting a code zero continuous line furler (something like this but by Precourt ). Also I will be have a torque luff rope sewn into the luff of my sails, this will be out of the Dynex also as this line under load is very torque resistant. The torque rope helps the flying furler (code zero) work better. This will all be topped off with a 2/1 halyard purchase and a #16 halyard winch. I should be able to set the tension on the luff at somewhere around 1200lbs. This way the sail will perform well to weather.

A gaff rigged cutter using a bowsprit traveler.

The way this system will work is: I attach the tack to the traveler (ring) and the head to the halyard. Haul the tack out to the end of the sprit, then haul the halyard up tight. Go sailing. At the end of the day I can elect to leave it set and just furl the sail, or I can douse it. The sail will be all rolled up and easy to put in a sail bag. If while I am out sailing and the wind goes light, all I need to do is drop the sail or furl the sail and drop it. Attach the drifter in the same manner and continue to sail. At the end of the day I can just furl the drifter or drop it and stow. All of this from the relative safety of the deck. I think this system will give me the best of both worlds, namely hank/furler. Oh ya,  when I get my new asymmetrical and can just furl that also instead of using a sock.

I hope to have this system up and sailing in 4-6 weeks. At this point a lot depends on how fast the traveler gets here from the UK. This weekend I remove my sprit to round and refinsih her.

It’s always fun when you get a package with new gear in the mail. Especially when it is something that will make doing the job at hand fun, informative, and a little easier. I ordered a Loos PT-3 Pro tension Gage (you can see one here) and a ATN Topclimber bosun’s chair. You can see the chair here.

Courtesy of loosnaples.com

I wanted to get the Loos Gage for not only tuning my new synthetic rig but also to measure what I had for tension in my present rig. I had tuned my rig the old fashion way. Push, pull, grunt,  scratch … and guess. I do have a bit of experience doing rigging work, but I have never had it put to a quantitative test before. My final adjustments on my present rig were done under sail. Tighten to the point so the leeward shrouds were snug.

What a surprise I received when I measured the tension on my present rig. My shrouds were tensioned near perfect.

1. Lowers 1220 lbs
2. Cap shrouds 1960 lbs
3. Intermediates 1540 lbs
4. Headstay (stay’sl stay) 1660 lbs

The BIG surprise was the forestay and backstay. My forestay was at 300 lbs and my backstay was at 250 lbs. No wonder she wasn’t sailing to weather well! She had to have had a lot of forestay sag. This really messes up the ability to point. why was I so loose? I don’t know. I have come up with a number of reasons why…maybe. I just don’t know.

On Loos’ web site they say a good starting point for forestay is 1600 lbs, shrouds at 1000 lbs. You usually want the longer shrouds (cap) set higher than the shorter shrouds (lowers) because of the stretch. This way when the load comes on the rig, your mast stays in column. Loos also points out that most people do not tension their rigs enough for fear of “breaking something”. They also point out that the America’s cup boats tighten their rigs as much as the structure of the boat will allow.

A special note on using the Loos Gage on 316 wire. The Loos Gage is designed to be used on 302/304 stainless wire. Since 302/304 is stronger size for size than 316. The concept behind the Gage is based on the strength of the wire, not the actual size. So you can use it on 316 wire. You just need to find what size wire in 302/304 is equal in breaking load to the size 316 you have. For example – on the tension chart from Loos for the Gage it has listed the tension readings for 9/32 302/304 wire. The breaking strength of that wire is 10,300 lbs. The breaking strength for 5/16 316 is rated at 10,600. So I would use the readings for 9/32 302/304 for my 5/16 316 because the strengths are about equal. For the synthetic rigging the Gage will not work as far as measuring tension because the breaking strength is so large and is off the Loos charts. So it will only give me a reference point. I emailed Loos about this and they confirmed my thoughts.

Why is all this so important to me. It has a lot to do with the way I’m going to set up my roller furling. That post comes next.

Ok, I have to go clean my dinghy. Remember that a ship is known by her boats!

Gary