Me too!!

In the north where the mast is unstepped for half the year, giving the rigging a break, it does last longer than the abused rigging in the tropics that is in constant duty for the entire year. As for the non-stop sailors, nowadays they use synthetic rigging which lets them sail farther on a single rig. When they were steel rigged doing that course, a lot of rig failures occurred along the way. (The synthetic rigs of today still suffer rig failures but due to the fact that they use the spindliest little rig they can in the name of reducing windage).

@@RiggingDoctor I sailed from Florida to Alaska. On my way to Hawaii from the Galapagos I paralleled a large group going to the Marquesas and the most common problems reported by that fleet on the daily net were rigging failures. I was really surprised at the number of problems with rigging. One who experienced the second most severe failure was a professional rigger who almost lost his mast. When I got to HI I had a rigger check and tune my rig - he found the tang on the running backstay I'd used the most had fractured but not failed. Not likely to have been catastrophic but it was a good warning.

Glad it was helpful for you!

Glad you liked it!

Thanks for sharing!

A well tuned rig is good for about +/-20°F from where you set it.

It was chafe. The anchor broke loose and chafed on the headstay!

Thank you very much! At the end of the day, I’m trying to provide the information that I wish existed when I started sailing.

That’s like driving a car 100,000 miles on the original oil. It can be done but you risk everything by not doing the proper maintenance.

Always next time ;)

@@RiggingDoctor sure is. Like I said I wanted it done this time. I should have done it myself I guess. Do I remember you saying on one of your vids that you were going to swap the lashings on the shrouds for turnbuckles?

Thanks :)

Mine is 9mm New England Ropes STS-HSR. It’s heat set Dyneema.

@@RiggingDoctor Thank you so much. Dyneema people should thank you too.

Yep, it makes the eye splice for the ends of the stay.

Look up the papers from Samson for mining, arbor, and oil rigs. They had the best information in them!

samsonrope.com/docs/default-source/technical-bulletins/tb_inspection-retirement-pocket-guide_aug2013_web.pdf?sfvrsn=c3d63bbd_2 samsonrope.com/resources/general/understanding-creep Basically everything you could desire will be on this page: samsonrope.com/resources/technical-documents#TechnicalDocumentsGeneralResources

Insurance companies don’t care what you are rigged with as long as it’s 10y or 10,000nm. I would like to have turnbuckles but they cost about $100 each, so I’m going to keep deadeyes and $1000 in my pocket. I made the headstays turnbuckles because it was a pain to get the tensioning lines rigged up their and it was only two of them. If someone can afford turnbuckles, the combination of deadeye to take up the slack and creep with a turnbuckle below will be ideal!

You can also do it by eye and feel. Practice and experience get you to that point. You want to make sure the mast is true at rest and on each tack. If you see the mast looking a bit wonky on a particular tack, then you know you need to adjust the respective stays to get it there.

If you do it yourself, it’s much cheaper. If you pay to have it done, it’s about the same price

Dyneema works really well for trailer sailors, since the line is soft when unloaded. As for chafing, it's not really a big issue since the stays will be slack so it's more case of them rubbing around and getting a little fuzzy instead of something gouging against them with a lot of pressure. What part of the Chesapeake do you sail? We plan on being in the Chesapeake around the Summer of 2022. We should meet up!

@@RiggingDoctor thanks! I thought about the possibility of coiling and storing the synthetic stays in canvas bags while trailering to avoid damage. We’re in the upper bay north of Baltimore. Meeting up would be awesome!

We only have liability insurance since we fix everything ourselves and do our best to not be in the situation where we would need to submit a claim. 10y/10000nm is driven by insurance because in that time frame, cracks will arise and if not found in an inspection they will be found when it breaks!

It needs to be inspectable. I replaced our wind steering control lines with Dyneema and they chafed through in a few thousand miles! As long as all the leads are fair and there is no chafing, it should last a long time, but you need to be able to inspect the whole length or you might find yourself as a very deep draft vessel one day. If you are able to inspect it but not easily, I would give it a look at least once a week if you are sailing full time, or once a month if you are a weekend sailor. If it’s easy to get at, I would give it a look every time you plan to go sailing.

@@RiggingDoctor thanks for prompt and thoughtful reply

The cost is about the same if you have someone do it for you, but if you do it yourself, synthetic is cheaper

I touched on it very quickly when I said it’s lighter, but didn’t go into detail on those advantages. Let me know if you need technical support when you are making your rigging. You can always email me for questions at riggingdr@gmail.com.

@@RiggingDoctor Thank you very much! I can find general stuff on channels like yours, Tulsa's, Zingaro, etc., but may have some specific questions to come. I did post a video tour of my project on my channel if interested in taking a look. It's a bit overwhelming for one guy, but getting there.

DSM (the manufacturer of Dyneema) publishes all of their test results. The have done extensive research in the mining and arborist worlds, and that is where I have gotten most of my information from when Dyneema was new for the marine world. Now that it’s been a few years, their marine information is starting to fill in better. As for the UV, I spoke with the head of their R&D division and he told me about the 0.1μm skin that forms over the line. A few years later, the study was published by them so now I fully trust his word as it’s no longer just hearsay.

I used to believe that it was important but I have met people who rigged with Amsteel for a fraction of the price and it is working very well. It creeps a bit more in the beginning but then it settles down and works beautifully for less money.

We had a new metal inner forestay when I rerigged with dyneema (so I didn’t replace it at that time) that died on us in 2019 and I replaced with DM20. It is an incredible material but really pricey! Creep on DM20 is significantly lower than creep from heat set SK78. All this said, I have met two people with 40+ foot boats that rigged with Amsteel Blue (not heat set). It is significantly cheaper so they simply went way oversized and have minimal issues with creep. So, more expensive doesn’t always mean “the only way to do it”.

That works very well! It’s actually the ideal setup, just too expensive for us to have. Each turnbuckle costs us $100 and we have 12 stays! We have turnbuckles on the two headstays, the other 10 are purely lashings to save us $1000!

You can mix and match, but you need to do one side of the mast at a time. So, forward lowers, aft lower, and cap shrouds at the same time on that side of the mast. For example, port in steel starboard in Dyneema.

It can be used but you just need to tighten it when it gets cold.

@@RiggingDoctor thank you, you guys are one of the few content creators that provide useful information for the genre. Thank you.

We have hove to in really high winds (we stopped sailing and started heaving to when the winds hit 60 knots). It wasn’t fun because of the present situation but we weren’t heeled over anything ridiculous. There is additional windage but the reduction in weight aloft helps keep the boat upright. I would say that our tiny trysail was the biggest windage in the rig and had us heeled over between 10-15° during the storm.

Not having a furled headsail is the biggest decrease in windage in a blow. When we switched and had our first squall, that was the biggest thing we noticed. The bow was no longer pulled along by the wind like it used to.

We haven’t seen any evidence of that

Initial cost is cheaper IF you do it yourself. It’s easy but time consuming to make, so if you are paying someone by the hour, it can be as expensive as steel rigging. I have some ideas about how to make it work inside a furler but I haven’t tested them yet to say if it works or not.

It’s a bit more expensive compared to steel, but it doesn’t have all the problems of steel

Right now, you can replace all the other stays in Dyneema and keep the furler on a metal stay if you wanted to convert and keep the furler. I’m working on a few ideas to make Dyneema work inside a furler but I haven’t tested them yet to say if it works or not.

@@RiggingDoctor Please keep working on that.

@@RiggingDoctor if you have the time when you are back in St Augustine you can use mine to toss around ideas.

If you want to keep the furler on the headstay and have the advantage of light synthetic then go with antitorsional cable and continuous furler, you will be only able to set the jib full in or full out and eventually drop it because it’s hanked on. I’ll go that way on my next boat. Great vid Herb, keep sharing all your knowledge on synthetic rigging, it’s a pleasure to appraise that much from you, thank you!

We used heat set SK78 for our standing rigging and and our inner forestay is DM20. DM20 is better than SK78 and SK99, but it’s also more expensive. For the price, heat set SK78 is a less expensive and very good.

@@RiggingDoctor thanks again

Not really. I buy Dyneema in bulk to get a discount and make all the associated parts from basic materials to keep costs down

These are good points! Cost: cheaper than steel if you do it yourself, equivalent if you pay to have it made for you. Weight: about 90% lighter. The entire rig will weigh a few pounds so switching out the stays is very easy since nothing is heavy. I would say that it’s something a beginner could easily do since there are no special or expensive tools involved.

Most riggers will try to push you towards steel because it’s much faster for them to make and it uses that expensive swage machine they had to buy.

If you tuned at 50F, it’s only a difference of 30F. I tune at 80F and find it fine +/-20F. I have sadly been in weather approaching 110F and it was tight but it didn’t break anything. As the weather drops past -30F from tuning, I don’t go full sail and avoid gybes. At -40F from tuning, I keep sails no higher than the spreaders. So, if you tune it at 50F and forget to tune it at 80F it will be really tight and stress the hell out of your fittings, but as long as they are in good condition they won’t break. If there is any hairline cracks in them, the force might open the crack up and reveal its presence. If the boat is going to sail in weather ranging from 40F to 80F, I would shoot for tuning it at 60F. It will be slightly tighter in the summer and slightly looser in the spring/fall but usable all sailing season long! Turnbuckles will make it much easier to keep the tune, as loosening or tightening is just a matter of turning the screw as opposed to messing with the lashings.

Foot per foot, Dyneema is cheaper than wire, so if you do it yourself, Dyneema rigging is cheaper than steel rigging.

They need replacement every 10 years.

Ideally, you want to figure out the RM30 and then figure out the rig loads to properly size the stays. I have also heard of other riggers simply saying to go 1mm thicker Dyneema than the steel stay was.

@@RiggingDoctor Yea' that 1mm was something I mentioned to you a few days ago and the way areas work with solids is that it is always added to or subtracted from the outside. When you look at the surface area of circles with increasing diameters and do a 2,4,6,8,10,12 thing [ I used to be into telescopes ] the surface areas increase at an amazing rate. So the cross section area of a 10 compared to a 12 would be a sizable percentage and I think 12mm dyneema [ 75 ] is 17,000kg - Wow and there are 4 per side, so........pretty cool Herbie.

Rod has much lower wind resistance but the heads are very difficult to inspect. Synthetic is more windage but very easy to inspect. That’s kind of the big difference between them. It gets down to nitty gritty stuff like weight and stuff, but that’s the general difference between the two.

We are going to be doing that soon! We’re planning on doing it as a live video :)

Show me a boat setup that doesn’t get blown apart by lightning 🤣

I charge $300 per stay to fabricate the rigging, and $400 for a headstay, plus the cost of materials. Different rigs need different thicknesses of line which changes the price of materials, but my labor cost is fixed.

Yes, if by natural you are referring to “plant grown” and not mined metal. Steel is iron and carbon, not exactly something you would find lying around in the ground is vast quantities. Dyneema is absolutely synthetic, as it was designed in a lab.

About the same if you don’t do it yourself, but if you do some yourself, synthetic is cheaper

It depends on a whole bunch of factors. I can do the math for you, my consult fee is $120. If you want to figure it out yourself, look at the RM30 value for your boat as that is the maximum rig load your boat will experience.

If you do it yourself: cheaper. If you pay to have it done: a little more expensive.

It’s because by 10 years, stress cracks will have formed somewhere in the rig. This is why insurance companies want their rigs replaced at 10 years to reduce the number of claims they have to deal with.

@@RiggingDoctor i get all that, but where is the evidence of this? Has someone done testing?

It’s not so much from tests but just historical data of the age of rigging when problems have arises. From this, the insurance companies have done their calculations and risk assessments to determine that 10 years is a safe bet for them.

@@RiggingDoctor, I agree, but to clarify, the usual way insurance companies do their "investigation" is around the loss of money -- simply that. If they have numerous claims and find out that their client has not done new rigging for many years/nm, they simply draw a line such that almost all of their client's claims fall on the wrong side to save their business. Thus, if you have insurance and expect some reassurance, you are forced to re-rig, although your rig may not have been subject to terrible forces or any significant corrosion. Just my two cents. Cheers.

We don't have that where we're from. Insurance companies don't care when the rigging is replaced. If it fails, the insurance payout is affected by the age, though. Insurance companies have guides for checking the rigging, and when to replace it. The checks boils down to about broken strands, rust/oxidation, kinks in the wire, cracks or enlonged holes in the eyelets. Broken chainplates or missing pins is the reasons I've heard that rigs are coming down, and our rigging is as old as our boats.

Yep! That is what would happen in a flash. Lightning rarely occurs on the ocean and we run the gamble when we are near shore.

Yes* *the pipe will protect against chafe caused by the sheets but it needs to be securely lashed to the stay so that it itself doesn’t cause chafe as it rolls around.

I have now seen so many pvc cracked into sections or lengthwise. May recommend Pex instead. If using pvc pick electrical conduit preferably schedule 80. Carefully chamfered ends plus chafe protection under for synthetic.

I got my bird in Florida and her name is Gerry so she hasn’t come into the videos yet

I wouldn’t say not suitable because we have been sailing with it in very varied climates. It’s just important to remember that it will slacken out when it gets cold so don’t have a full sail crash jibe in the evening! It holds its tune +/-20°F, but we have been able to sail on shorter sails all the way down to -50°F from the tuning temperature without problem (tuned at 80°F and sailing with it very slack at 30°F). I wouldn’t try beating in a gale with rigging that slack, but we were able to reach with success in the winter.

@@RiggingDoctor Seems the way to go. We will decide in a couple of years when going offshore. Tks for the info! Cheers

The 10,000 miles is also based off of what insurance companies say

@@RiggingDoctor Which companies?

Boat US (Geico) and StateFarm. These are the two companies that I have personally had insurance with and that’s what they told me I needed.

@@RiggingDoctor Thanks a lot, very useful. Cheers

It’s overpriced. New England Ropes makes one that is the same thing for less money.

It depends on the application, but in our case: 9mm for the stays, deadeyes, and 5mm for the lashings.

Chafe sleeve over the stay and soft hanks for the sail

@@RiggingDoctor awesome I'll order some up! These Hanks look tired anyways! Going to rig up a 1990 West wight potter 19 with dyneema. Might be the only one ever rigged that way!

Very true!

If you make it yourself it’s cheaper than steel

Rod is amazing but really requires a diligent maintenance period. The heads are feats of engineering!

😎

That is very true! One of my dads friends lost an eye (luckily that was all he lost) when that exact situation happened to him.

That’s good to identify! Synthetic is great if you are in the right climate. If you are not, steel is your new best friend!

It expands.

I’m still working on a way to make it work. I have the idea but I haven’t tested it properly yet.

@@RiggingDoctor Well, if all else is dyneea and only one is metal, that's not too bad. I have a friend in his 70's and he recommends thigh tensile gal. and basically the big diff. between it and s/s is looks I think.

Also the galvanized can leave discoloration streaks and, I understand, benefits from some different maintenance procedures.

@@gregorytremblay4913 HUH, thanks for that Greg. I am really only thinking about Dyneema, but are you saying that the gal stains the sails? and just out of curiosity, do you know any of the maintenance issues with it? I really thought that high tensile gal would be long term etc really good, just ugly.

Galvanized steel is actually really good for rigging, but the discoloration comes from the slurry you have to paint on it all the time to keep it from rusting. If it’s worm/parcel/served and then maintained wet with slurry religiously, the wire will still look like new at 50 years! The problem is the slurry. I was about to rerig in galvanized when I figured out how to make Dyneema work, so I went with synthetic.

If you do it yourself it’s much cheaper to install

Very much! As it cools it expands, then it shrinks back when it heats.

@@RiggingDoctor correct

@@RiggingDoctor That is rather interesting. Usually things expand when they heat up. Thanks for that information.

Excellent question. Thanks for asking!

@@RiggingDoctor Does the shrinking require loosening the rig? Pacific North West based our temperature swings are becoming radical. Had reached over 110°F on the water this year, switch back to freezing.

It’s heat set SK75 and ours is 9mm

@@RiggingDoctor Are you telling me your main shrouds and backstays are only 9mm? I was told by a rigger, that the way he does it is to add 1mm dia to the existing s/s 1x19. But hey, don;t get me wrong, you have done it and it has taken you across the Atlantic and back.

Going 1mm bigger than steel is an easy “safe way” to figure out a size of Dyneema. I did mine from the water up with calculations to figure out exactly how much force my rig would be subjected to and then found a line size that would meet my needs with a hefty safety factor. Our rig is pretty short by modern standards so the loads are less intense on the rigging. I have done rigging calculations for a variety of 30 foot boats and some can get by on 5mm stays while others with taller rigs need 9mm stays!

@@RiggingDoctor My main mast is only 13m, so the sail is probably only 12m and the foot is not as long as it could be.

I have Colligo 13mm heat set SK75 on my Island Packet 370. According to Colligo, dyneema is so strong that breaking strength is irrelevant. Size based on creep. So I have 8 stays with 13mm SK75 and 2 Furlers with SS. It’s feels beefy.

Haha! Bird damage is a major concern 😂

Fair aisle has a sweet set of baggy wrinkles on their boat!

No matter how long I am going to hear something; 'Baggywrikles'?

Sweet playlist!

Always a plus

I thought it was the insurance companies that state those numbers.

The Great Lakes are a special place, and the only place where time stands still for steel rigging. Oddly enough, when one of those boats leaves the lakes and enters the salty world, their rigging dies a miserable and rapid death! Dyneema is actually very resistant (but not immune) to chafe. It takes a lot of effort and time to chafe through it, which is plenty of time to find and stop it from becoming a serious issue. Nylon stretches a lot, which gives it excellent elasticity, but also generates a lot of heat which further degrades the fibers. Dyneema has no elasticity, so it doesn’t heat itself up for a speedy death. The 10 year, 10,000nm business is based on the findings from insurance companies. They like their bots to be rerigged at those two points to reduce the risk of claims. At 10 years in salty places where the boats remain rigged year round, stress cracks will have developed somewhere in the rig.

@@RiggingDoctor I used nylon as an example of chafe issues with synthetics. Dacron is similar. I guess my point is that you need to be sure of what is going on. Tough in the middle of the night in a gale. I am unaware of boats getting routinely rerigged during circumnavigation. Although my workplace was in the Great Lakes over the years many customers took their boats south for several years at a time and a couple completed circumnavigations. You still have not addressed the effect of continuous UV exposure. Swaged terminals can be a problem but I have not seen a catastrophic failure. I have seen broken strands. Stay-locs or Norseman facilitate inspection.

BTW no malice. I'm a fan :)

Boats should get rerigged but rarely do before something breaks after their first 10,000nm. As for UV, I talked about it for a moment. The outer 0.1μm gets destroyed by UV and then protects the rest of the rope from any further damage. Long term testing by DSM has found no loss of strength from continuous UV exposure so it has been determined to be negligible.

That is an excellent point! We carry a 600’ spool in the lazarette, enough to do a full rerig and the spool weighs more than the line on it!

That’s why those boats are also called Freedom Rigs 😉

@@RiggingDoctor There are a lot of unstayed rigs other than the Freedom models…. and a lot to be said for them. Modern sailors seem to think that the triangular sail of the Bermuda rig, and it’s towering stayed mast is the ultimate rig for every purpose…. It is clearly NOT.

I agree! If the boat is built to support the mast, then you never have to worry about the rig anywhere you go! If you do have cable dependent rigging, then you are stuck choosing between different materials.

@@stonetoolcompany3649 ...and in small boats they are a blast. On bigger boats the masts have to be constructed very carefully. Often out of carbon fiber, mostly custom made at very high costs. This prohibits the use of these riggs for most of us.

I guess I have an older freedom rig, keel stepped boxed Spruce main, deck stepped mizzen. Cheaper than carbon one can assume without checking, actually amazingly light.

Not sure whether to feel complimented or offended

@@RiggingDoctor It was meant as a compliment.

Thanks :)

It could be! 1μm = 0.001mm, either way, it’s insignificant in line that is several millimeters thick.

@@RiggingDoctor yep completely agree, it was just that the text didn't agree with what you were saying :-)!

People who sail around the world are sailing with rigging that is on borrowed time. Prudent sailors will inspect their rigging and replace it accordingly. The reason people don’t replace their rigging in a timely manner is mostly due to ignorance of the need. My goal is to educate and inform new sailors as well as more experienced sailors such as yourself who do not know how often their rigging needs replacing.

Seriously rude.

Here we have a classic example of "Disagreeing on the internet: you're doing it wrong."

🤣

@@RiggingDoctor here's your history lesson: we grew up, centuries, meliniums ago with rope, mostly Hemp rope to be exact, most commonly made from marijuana stems. the rope frayed and chaffed, and deteriorated with the elements. therefore where eventually (for the most part) replaced with galvanized, and then stainless steel. the rope is more forgiving do to it's slight elasticity. yet had a shorter life expectancy, and a higher error ratio. unless grossly inadequate, such as regional coastal cruiser, crossing oceans in troubled weather/ water, it does not wear out or destroy otherwise healthy steel rigging. you are partially right, dynema is a better rigging, for reducing stress on the overall rig, and being more forgiving in one sense. it is a bit more forgiving than adequate steel rigging, but as you mentioned, without careful and constant caution (and a measure of good luck) it can and will chaff with minimal contact of foriegn (to it) repeated contact. At sea, in hazardous conditions, when visibility is poor, and attention is focused on situations other than the rigging is no time to have chaff and a falling mast with broken dynema. no doubt there are circumstances, probably many, if not most, that dynema is a worthwhile and completely intelligent option with minimal risks, likewise the best option. but steel needing replaced every six months and X number of miles, or however you put it, its full on, flat out nonsense. bull crap, and creating a danger to those that take your advice without knowing better.