Can newbies really be that thick

[Daydream believer]

Last week a 26 ft yacht was launched from our sailing club hard. The owners had owned the boat for 3 years but the first year sailed very little as they were doing jobs. The second year they did a few short trips but the 20hp engine kept breaking down so they did very little sailing. They sopent 2 winters stripping the inside & rebuilding some of it. This winter they dropped the mast & repaired the VHF aerial & wind instrument.
Just before launch the HM used the gantry to hoist the mast with them & left them to it.
They tensioned up the rig & launched the boat.
Friday the mast fell down.
The idiots had tightened the bottlescrews but not realised that the nuts on the threads were there to lock the barrels. As a result the cap shroud & intermedite shroud unscrewed themselves. They had not put the mast upright & one side had minimal threas in the barrels.

Do we really have to actually tell them that the threads have to be located in the barrels equally & the nuts are there to lock them off?
They now have a broken boom & a damaged mast & another season of no sailing. It really beggars belief at some of the stupid things some do. We have had masts fall down before .
One 28 ft Jeneau is sitting on the mooring with half a keel because the pivot bolt rusted through & the centreboard dropped out. That is the second one we have had like that.

 

[Refueler]

Not the first to have that ! For the bottle screws to unscrew - sounds like they allowed the shrouds / stays to rotate while tightening ?? They soon rotate other way !!
Must admit - I prefer bottle screws that take a pin inside the main body through the thread end. But that's me ...

 

[johnalison]

I had a lower come loose once when tacking home up the Wallet, because I hadn’t tightened the locking nut at the start of the season. I had only been cruising for about twenty years, so you can count me as a newbie idiot. It was surprising how unmanageable the boat, a Sadler 29, was without an inner, so an immediate tack and then motor on was the only option.

 

[veshengro]

Watching some people at the Boat Yard it occurs to me that some find launching or recovery of their boat can be quite a stressful thing, especially when it's dangling on a Crane wire or in a hoist. It's a bit like watching expectant Fathers waiting outside the Delivery Room. In the old days it would have been half a packet of Woodbines occasion....
Maybe in all the kerfuffal they tried to do too many jobs at once and forgot to run the bottle crew nuts up tight. I'm glad they were not at sea under sail when the mast came down anyway.

 

[Refueler]

Newbies .... so many times I've seen guys back their mobo on trailer to water ..... find that water is not enough ... they edge the car combo more and more ... till car has saltwater lapping around the sills ...

One time in Devon - watched a guy with car / trailer on the beach ... all fine till he got near the waters edge and found car sinking into the water logged sand ... needed another car - 4x4 - to rescue him and trailer.

 

[Daydream believer]

Newbies .... so many times I've seen guys back their mobo on trailer to water ..... find that water is not enough ... they edge the car combo more and more ... till car has saltwater lapping around the sills ...

One time in Devon - watched a guy with car / trailer on the beach ... all fine till he got near the waters edge and found car sinking into the water logged sand ... needed another car - 4x4 - to rescue him and trailer.

There is a well know chap in our village who started out in the local garage. He then had his own garage then just did vehicle repairs & now does anything from helping the club, Service the RIBS, drive the tractor etc, to looking after people's dogs when they go on hols. He is the same age as me. He just has the wierd habit of turning up when needed.
I recall he often went to the beach pulling out bogged vehicles with boats, from the beach with the garage land rover at all hours, I recall seeing some vehicle would be almost submerged.
He was at my workshop last year talking about this, when it suddenly occurred to me that he used to drive down the road to the beach to do the recovery. He was just 13 years old & the garage owner just let him do it. Things were so different 65 years ago. He must have pulled out a few dozen before a proper ski boat club was formed & facilities were organised.

 

[MisterBaxter]

I remember a delightful day in Newport, Pembrokeshire, when a chap parked his big 4x4 on the beach, launched his jetski and zoomed up and down the beach for an hour or so at high speed, ignoring swimmers, speed limit, common sense and repeated protests. When he came back to shore his car, left right at the waterline at half tide and rising, was a swamped right-off. Divine justice in action.

 

[sarabande]

Do we really have to actually tell them that the threads have to be located in the barrels equally & the nuts are there to lock them off?
They now have a broken boom & a damaged mast & another season of no sailing. It really beggars belief at some of the stupid things some do. We have had masts fall down before .


Daydream, I think you are being very unkind, and a little inaccurate. Everyone has to be a beginner at some stage, and I wonder if yu had offered to help them in the early stages of their learning.

And you are wrong about threads having to be located equally in the barrels. The threads are adjusted to make the mast sit vertically in (or on) the boat. It may be a matter of parts of a millimetre more on one side or the other, but I have yet to come across standing rigging which is perfectly symmetrical. I suggest your assumption is facile.

 

[Snowgoose-1]

I sailed a whole season with the shrouds not held captive in the spreader ends.
I didn't find out till the mast was unstepped by the yard .
Ultimately my fault for not checking.

 

[alahol2]

And you are wrong about threads having to be located equally in the barrels.... I have yet to come across standing rigging which is perfectly symmetrical. I suggest your assumption is facile.

You are welcome to come and see my rigging. All pairs of stays were checked before they were installed, they were perfect. I use a digital caliper between the end of the swaged screw thread and the rigging screw on each pair to ensure the mast is perpendicular. How else would you know that the mast is upright?

 

[penberth3]

And you are wrong about threads having to be located equally in the barrels. The threads are adjusted to make the mast sit vertically in (or on) the boat. It may be a matter of parts of a millimetre more on one side or the other, but I have yet to come across standing rigging which is perfectly symmetrical. I suggest your assumption is facile.

Is this a wind up? "Equal" doesn't mean equal to fractions of a millimetre. It means having APPROXIMATELY the same length of thread engaged at each end, i.e. not 100mm through at one end and half a thread at the other. FFS.

 

[Rum Run]

I had the experience on a new- to- me boat of a stay undoing the bottle screw before my very eyes once the locknut was undone ! This was disconcerting to say the least.
Probably the PO had not gripped the stud on the stay end while doing the bottlescrew up and unlaid the wire as there was a birdcage at the top. New stay required...... He'd been sailing for over 10 years too.

 

[William_H]

I don't trust the locking screws on turn screw. I prefer to add locking wire from the centre hole down to the toggle as an addition. ol'will

 

[sarabande]

You are welcome to come and see my rigging. All pairs of stays were checked before they were installed, they were perfect. I use a digital caliper between the end of the swaged screw thread and the rigging screw on each pair to ensure the mast is perpendicular. How else would you know that the mast is upright?

All that equalising the thread in the barrels tells you is that the screw thread is the same.

You may (are likely) to have shrouds of unequal length, a boat deck which is assymmetrical in the horizontal axis across the beam, a mast which is very slightly bent. All/some of which will conspire to place unequal tension and assymmetrical length in the shrouds.

The last rigger used a heavy weight on the main halyard to check that the top of the mast was directly above the centreline of the mast heel, locking the cap shrouds before adjusting the intermediates to take out "pant" (fore and aft bend), and then the back stay for the fore and aft mast "lean" . He had spent a while ensuring the boat was as level as possible across the beam while in the cradle, so that he had the mast weight as a datum/ reference.

 

[PabloPicasso]

I am an amateur sailer/owner. I know a lot more now than I did.

I crewed a good bit before buying a boat, and helped out when I got the opportuity.

I joined a club who's members were really helpful.

If i had just bought a boat and sailed off I'd have made many more newbie errors than I already have.

I did sail with some experienced salts in the solent who were not impressed by people who didnt have their level of knowledge and skill. Was not a pleasant weekend for me.

Like watching tv quizzes, The answers are easy when you know.

Wouldn't it have been better to supoort the newbies in getting a basic, and safe, shroud setting. Usually one can tell if people haven't got a clue.

 

[Refueler]

I remember a delightful day in Newport, Pembrokeshire, when a chap parked his big 4x4 on the beach, launched his jetski and zoomed up and down the beach for an hour or so at high speed, ignoring swimmers, speed limit, common sense and repeated protests. When he came back to shore his car, left right at the waterline at half tide and rising, was a swamped right-off. Divine justice in action.

Pal of mine had his car roll down a slip and ended up with seawater past the sills .... when he claimed on insurance - their reply was "Write Off" .. and explanation that any work to re-instate the car was most likely wasted effort as the seawater would have started corrosion.

Years later - we bought a nice VW Golf for the Lab Manager ... via German Auctions. In first 6 months - the car had a new wiring loom ... engine rebuild ... and shortly after that - was stolen ! We actually breathed a sigh of relief - that now we no longer had the car to keep repairing. And pity for the poor suckers who buy it of the thieves.
What caused such problems ? Remember the floods in Germany / Europe some years ago ? Large number of cars were flooded .. cleaned up and put into the auctions. They suffered exactly what that Insurance Co had said to my pal all those years before.

Noss Mayo - The Ship Inn. Lovely little village - good pub ... used to go there when at College .. Parking was a problem and many would park on the little beach and then walk up the hill to the pub. Tide would come in and local farmer would fire up the tractor left at back of the beach - for pulling the cars off the sand onto the road !!

 

[Bouba]

And you are wrong about threads having to be located equally in the barrels. The threads are adjusted to make the mast sit vertically in (or on) the boat. It may be a matter of parts of a millimetre more on one side or the other, but I have yet to come across standing rigging which is perfectly symmetrical. I suggest your assumption is facile.

You are welcome to come and see my rigging. All pairs of stays were checked before they were installed, they were perfect. I use a digital caliper between the end of the swaged screw thread and the rigging screw on each pair to ensure the mast is perpendicular. How else would you know that the mast is upright?

The bottle adjustment is also to account for any stretching of the cables, which could be uneven

 

[38mess]

We were all newbies once, don't be so harsh on them.

 

[Porthandbuoy]

They now have experience, it won’t happen to them again. Someone should give them a link to this forum.
FWIW I set my rigging up on the hard, but don’t finish adjusting and locking the rigging screws until the boats afloat. The theory being there might be a change in hull shape twixt cradle/shores and afloat. I use Monel locking wire.

 

[steve yates]

You are welcome to come and see my rigging. All pairs of stays were checked before they were installed, they were perfect. I use a digital caliper between the end of the swaged screw thread and the rigging screw on each pair to ensure the mast is perpendicular. How else would you know that the mast is upright?

Hoist a plumbline up a halyard?