Home – Refit – Standing & Running Rigging

R&W Ropes – New Bedford, MA

The existing standing rigging was about 12 years old. That is approaching the limit of what insurance companies will insure so we opted to replace it.

We also wanted to make a few changes to make it easier to manage the boat … most notably the track for the spinnaker pole wasn’t long enough to stor the pole verically or move it side to side of the forestays without unhooking it.

The other change was to not reinstall the HF antenna. We have Iridium-go for offshore weather and we decided to retire the HF radio.

We also knew we needed running rigging work to replace compromised lines. As part of that effort we also made some changes again to make the boat safer, less cluttered and easier to handle.

Changes included:

– half halyards for the 2 head sails. Basically once these sails r rigged and set, the line used to raise them just gets coiled and left hanging on the base of the mast for months until the next occassion to lower that sail. The new system is a 2 piece system that leaves a small pigtail on the mast with the rest of the line safely stored away.

– new preventer system. The old system left a line run across the cockpit and didn’t provide a steep enough angle to keep the boom in place on a windy accidental jib. The new sytem is anchored to the back end of the boom and led through the bow cleat. We r still working our way through how we want to use it.

– we had new headsail sheets made that are longer to allow them to run arround the outside of the cockpit instead of through it. So far that is working well.

– The lazy jack rigging is still a bit of a work in progress.. still looking for the right geometry to allow the mainsail to raise cleanly while not pointed perfectly into the wind.