replace rigging 10/12 years - hype or not?

[duke]

Hi All,

just looking at a programme on TV about New York's Brooklyn Bridge where the steel wire rope and rigging cables are in good condition after 40 years or more.

However stainless steel rigging in sailing boats is recommended to be replaced after 10/12 years.
Is this coming from rigging companies to promote business and/or Insurance companies to be sure/ to be sure, or is it really necessary.
Are there any facts/figures / reports to clarify this question?

Regards,

Duke.

 

[webcraft]

Don't know about you, but my rigging is a little smaller in diameter than the Brooklyn Bridge, so perhaps there is less redundancy.

- Nick

 

[Anonymous]

I was speaking with one surveyor last year who said that in his personal opinion, unless there are any obvious signs of damage or corrosion, the fact that the rigging has survived for n years suggests that it was well manufactured and since there is no satisfactory (in his opinion) non-destructive testing possible, the life-test was the best test of all! I didn't find a single surveyor who agreed with him but then I didn't find any two who said exactly the same thing. In my case the rigging is far heavier than it needs to be so maybe it should last forever, but then will my insurers (or routine surveyor) agree?

David

 

[geoffatstanpit]

And it hasn't done as many tacks!

Geoff

 

[penultimate]

In this litigation minded age surveyors need to cover their backs and it would be a brave one who challenged the normally accepted 10 year rule.
On the other hand the boat on the adjacent mooring to mine is a motor boat with a free standing short wooden mizzen mast resembling a tree trunk and supporting a radar reflector. It has stainless steel stays and so at recent survey he was advised to replace them because their age was unknown. As they are purely cosmetic he asked and was told that it would satisfy the survey requirement if he just removed them!

 

[ex-Gladys]

Comparison with Brooklyn Bridge is inappropriate, I guess it isn't stainless. Stainless does not have some of the properties other steels do

 

[isha]

My boat laid up 6 onths every year on the hard and mast unstepped for same.
Does this then mean that my mast should be good for twice the suggested 10/12 years?
Dave

 

[isha]

me again. not my mast but the rigging is what i meant to refer to. Sorry
Dave

 

[Talbot]

As I understand it, the 10 years for cruising boats and 5 years for racing was initially a guideline, due to expected use, and then became an insurance driven requirement (i.e. a method they could use to weasel out of paying. It is really a factor of use, and IMHO if you are sailing around the world, you would need to replace rather earlier than every 10 years even if you were just cruising,

 

[Guest]

The main item in question is always mis-represented and its not the wire that is at risk .... it's the joints at talurits / swages / etc.
Commercial shipping end for ends wire cables and every so many years replaces. But end foir end is to cahnge the point of max wear.
Personally - and I mean personally - I don't change rigging at such 10 yr periods as the question posts ..... even on the race boat in Tallinn .... but it all depends on high hard you press your gear and what conditions you expect to be in.

I would suggest - IMHO - that most boats are not subject to such levels of stress on the rigging and in fact on most cruising boats would be surprised to find rigging at 10yrs in need of replacement.

BUT because of the problem to actually diagnose pending failure of any wire to talurit / swage etc. it is difficult to know really what condition your rigging is in. Its easy if the wire suffers damage - that is visible, but internal of a swage is not.

I believe that Insurance Co's have latched onto the 10 yr clause to cover their a....e !! And the req't of some Ins. Co's to survey rigging is ludicrous to say the least - I wouldn't put much credence to a survey of rigging other than tension and visible condition.

So now I'll probably be inundated with all sorts of 'experts' and views that call my opinion into question ..... I'm ready !!

 

[Guest]

I agree with him .... but wouldn't go so far as to say 'life-test' .... I would replace at some time - but not at 10 - 12 yrs unless I had real good reason to ..... I cannot believe that the average cruising boat suffers rigging failure at 10 yrs with such materials unless extra stress or circumstances to push the rigging past its limits new or old ....

We hear about resistive, ultrasonic .... all sorts of tests - but I am not convinced ..... and I was involved in NDT when I worked for SGS ..... we all have our crosses to bear !!!

 

[wagenaar]

I lost a mast at sea near A Coruña in Spain

and found it a rather frightening experience. The mast and rigging were at that time about twenty years old. The ships had been used rather extensively and in retrospect I should have changed the rigging earlier. Since I lost the mast at sea, I was unable to detect how and where the fracture had occured. From the bend in the mast I concluded that the port lower shroud had failed, but could not determine whether it was the cable, the connection to the mast or the swage. According to an earlier survey the diameter of the cable was one size bigger than necessary. As far as I understand the reaction of stainless steel to fatigue differs from that of carbon steel. Carbon steel begins to show deformation of an individual wire, followed by fracture of that wire and that is a clear sign that the cable should be replaced. Stainless just breaks and so a kind of statistical approach is needed to determine the moment to change the rigging. For a cruising boat this approach seems to show that after about ten years the changes of breakage are increasing. Racing boats normally are subjected to higher loads and therefore the cable reaches it limits earlier.
However, I am sure the insurance companies put a safe limit to their advice of ten and five years. One should realise that loosing a mast at sea means normally not only the mast, but also the sails, the boom and damage to the ship and that the total cost will be much higher than just the rigging.

 

[snowleopard]

what causes rigging wire to fail is fatigue induced by repeated shock loading. suspension bridge wires aren't subjected to the frequent changing loads so aren't likely to fail after a few years.

rigging wire doesn't give up after 10 years, it's just that the risk of failure starts to become significant in heavily used boats.

 

[Birdseye]

The 10 years sometimes quoted by insurance companies is simply a statistical deadline ie the age at which they start to find the rate of claims increasing sharply.

The problem is that the fatigue life of both wire and fittings depends on many factors - articulation of the rigging (remember the Bristish stell challenge yachts forestay failure), the strength of the rigging, the load and use, corrosion, steel cleanness (ie the inclusion count), manufacturing defects / stress raisers and many more. So there is no practical way of forecasting how long an individual boats rigging will last. Worse still, there is no really feasible non destructive testing system, and even careful visual inspection wont find internal cracking thats not made it to the surface.

The surveyor who took the line that past use showed it was good rigging was simply talking cr*p.

What I do is to visually inspect the fittings with a magnifying glass and the wire without, when I take down the mast at the end of the season. Assuming everything is OK, I repace the rigging when the insurance company wants me to. They dont seem bothered, so I did some at 18 years.

But its a bit like the Irishman falling from the 20 storey building. At each window he was heard to say "so far, so good"

 

[William_H]

In the last 2 years I have seen 3 rigging wire failures at our club. Two resulted in demolition of the mast. These were 20 to 26 ft keel boats that were racing. It is thought that the rigging was original and in the 20 + year old range. The wire failed at the lower end where it enters swage. Almost as if corrosion was a factor. It was SS wire of course. You would imagine the cap shrouds take the greatest load but it was the intermediates that failed in each case. The whole shroud broke with no sign of fraying first.
I was involved in a training fleet of 10 ft dinghys which got very little use and were unrigged except when sailing. It was amazing the number of stays I replaced,I expect in the 10 year range in this case from unravelling when individual strands broke. My theory is that it is age not fatigue that causes the failure. So for your keel boat 10 to 12 years might be a bit early but 15 to 20 years might be a bit late.
Incidently insurance companies here don't seem to be concerned with surveys on boats under about 26 ft. and certainly not on stay age. regards will

 

[macd]

A guy in our club lost his mast due to rigging failure last summer. Insurer reduced the pay-out by 20% because the standing rigging was (well) over 10 years old. What bothered me was that he'd bought the boat only months before, at which time neither the surveyor nor the insurer raised the issue. Given an OK survey, the owner had naturally enough assumed that this meant his rig was OK, and it was only after some post-failure digging that it emerged that the rigging was 'out of date'. Caveat emptor, as ever, but personally I think the surveyor should have some questions to answer.

 

[DiverTitch]

Happy to come and replace any rigging you guys are worried about, I think its hype but I have to make a living!! I have swaging and talurit gear up to 8mm can be done at your boat, home or by post. Titch at divertitch@hotmail.com