Thursday 17 May 2012

Rope Rigging?

My forestay has started to give up the ghost. One of the wires has broken from the ferrule. This says to me it's on its last legs. So I'm going for it, and am going to go with full - Marlow Excel D12 Max 78 2.5mm - for my standing rigging. The blurb says it has virtually no creep and no stretch. And a breaking load of roughly twice 3mm wire - @ 1005kg. This should be lighter, less windage and cheaper than replacing with wire. I'm also thinking of going with T terminals with backing plates rather than the hooks i currently have to avoid the issues Luke Heslewood has had with his C-Tech mast set up.


His shroud hooks have started to saw down the carbon mast. Not good! The other alternative is a bolt across the mast between the shroud holes. With a washer, P Clip Eye mount and a Nylock on each end. And just to a T Terminal on the forestay.

I don't really want to buy stay adjusters so I may just have fixed length shrouds. Currently the shrouds have swagged turnbuckles on the end. And I haven't felt the need to adjust them and I don't intend changing the rig settings, so the only reason I'd need stay adjusters would be to compensate for the creep in the rope. I'm thinking that I will make them to the same length as my current shrouds including the addition of a long shackle. This way If they do lengthen I can use a shorter shackle to compensate.

3 comments:

  1. Nice post, I thought about it, but dont have the time to mess around with rope rigging, The second photo is for my lowers, Were a patch has been added and then a t-hook backing plate added to fit a hook with a ring, This is the other alternative to having them bonded to the mast, And i like the new set up alot better than my old one, So i would also take that into consideration! If you want photos of the termination points up high ill phil you some if you want.

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  2. Ah... so you only have one T terminal for your lowers (intermediates - sort of too high for lowers?). On the front of the mast. Does this not twist the T and risk it popping out?

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  3. Yeah, just the one, nah, it hasnt done so far! The hook doesnt actually twist all that much, maybe 1cm momvements getting tensioned up, but as the mast rotates, the tension, and the hook itself slots into the plate, then moves down a few mm, Its hard to explain but it still works fine! And yeah, they are intermediates, but i just call them lowers, But, At the moment, I dont have the standard t-hook, I have a s-hook, it does the same job, but next week I am hoping to get a proper t-hook to splice some intermediates onto.

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