Rigger wants to use crane for rig inspection

[[3889]]

Sorry. But you are totally wrong.Try standing in front of a coroner with a silly grin on your face & telling him that a bloke was killed because you would not spend an extra £300-00. Falls from heights are common in many industries, not just on boats.

Accidents do happen with halyards. I have had one, when a bosuns chair broke & nearly had another avoided by shear luck. I know of a chap who fell 10 metres from his mast onto the boom below. I know of a rigger who accidentally cut the halyard he was hanging from when drilling holes for a radar bracket. He had been a rigger most of his life.

Accidents happen with all sorts of gear. It is all down to proper planning & I know that I would feel safer hanging from a crane. I have been up buildings of up to17 storeys in cradles, cherry pickers, cat ladders & cranes.

I demur. Research the legal terms "reasonably practicable" and"practicable" then reconsider who is the one with a silly grin, albeit unjustified. I was a H&S manager in the Fire Service so have at least a little knowledge of this subject.


https://simply-docs.co.uk/General-D...he term "so far as,measures to avoid the risk.

 

[Daydream believer]

I would dispute that you are right.
I still say that £ 300 does not constitute an "unreasonable sum". Try arguing otherwise with a judge & see how you get on.
Try disputing the claim with an insurance Co. It will cost you a lot more than £ 300, I'll bet.

 

[Poignard]

I would dispute that you are right.
I still say that £ 300 does not constitute an "unreasonable sum". Try arguing otherwise with a judge & see how you get on.
Try disputing the claim with an insurance Co. It will cost you a lot more than £ 300, I'll bet.

If I ask someone to quote for going up the mast and don't accept his quote, and he then offers to do it for less, and I accept his revised quotation; how am I liable if he is injured?

Am I not entitled to rely on his professional expertise and assume he will carry out his work in a safe manner?

I could go further and hold him liable for the expense I incur in repairing any damage caused by his fall and for cleaning the blood off my deck.

 

[[3889]]

I would dispute that you are right.

I'm sure you would but the terminology in the rest of of your response suggests you have failed to grasp the legal principles. The size of the financial outlay is is irrelevant. It is the proportionality of additional costs that count. That you conflate civil and statutory legal duties, discussing insurance payouts in the context of HASAWA, suggests a poor understanding of the subject.

 

[Quandary]

I apologize to all those with wooden boats and screwed in chainplates, I presumed something stronger, all the boats I have owned have been grp and have had chainplates that would be immovable with normal spanners, I would not have bought them otherwise. None of the masts I have watched come down usually in club races involved failed chain plates.
I used to race a Sigma 33 OOD in the days when the one design sails had to be dacron, to be competitive in all conditions we altered rake and mast bend frequently. I have encountered far more slack than too tight rigging on cruising boats and have been on such boats when the mast has been panting. I appreciate that the Sigmas were fractional rigs but only three of the boats I have owned were, the others were all masthead, easier to set up okay but still needed proper mast support. Amazing that, so far, we have managed to be fast in one design fleets without ever having a mast or rigging failure?
Next time you are beating in a breeze have a look at your leeward shrouds, on a substantial number of boats they will be flapping about.

 

[DJE]

Next time you are beating in a breeze have a look at your leeward shrouds, on a substantial number of boats they will be flapping about.

I thought the rule of thumb was that they should stay tight until about 20 degrees of heel and then go slack.

 

[dom]

I apologize to all those with wooden boats and screwed in chainplates, I presumed something stronger, all the boats I have owned have been grp and have had chainplates that would be immovable with normal spanners, I would not have bought them otherwise. None of the masts I have watched come down usually in club races involved failed chain plates.

But it's not only wooden boats/rigs which could be damaged by what you describe, it is most boats and certainly most modern boats.

Tensioning a rig by method of harnessing the large forces arising on a beat is certainly possible, but it is tricky and sometimes counter-intuitive. E.g., wind up the backstay beating into 15kts+ (normal on fractional boats) and the leeward shrouds may loosen a little. So one removes this slack. Back at the dock or after turning off the wind one then loosens the backstay, thereby increasing the tension on the shrouds with multiple random effects on the uppers, diagonals, and lowers.

I'd always recommend asking a rigger if in any doubt and certainly for more complex rigs.

 

[Deleted member 36384]

But it's not only wooden boats/rigs which could be damaged by what you describe, it is most boats and certainly most modern boats. ......

There is something amis here then. In the early 80's I worked full time for a sailing centre on the Clyde which had a significant racing slant to it's business model. I frequently took boats out where the rigging was tuned by sailing close hauled. This was by riggers and a well known sail maker based on the Clyde.

 

[Deleted member 36384]

I thought the rule of thumb was that they should stay tight until about 20 degrees of heel and then go slack.

Not slack. You might feel the tension has decreased compared to windward shrouds, but not slack.

 

[dom]

There is something amis here then. In the early 80's I worked full time for a sailing centre on the Clyde which had a significant racing slant to it's business model. I frequently took boats out where the rigging was tuned by sailing close hauled. This was by riggers and a well known sail maker based on the Clyde.

But were these not masthead rigs with continuous rigs? If so, then nothing wrong with that if one knows what one is doing and a team including riggers and sailmakers most certainly would.

But rigs and mast design has come on quite a way since then and fractional rigs with an element of pre-bend (ex backstay tension) are now common. Set-up properly these offer a significant improvement in performance, but the set-up can be trickier and require more dockside pre-tensioning amongst other differences.

 

[penberth3]

...I was a H&S manager in the Fire Service so have at least a little knowledge of this subject...

So you know about LOLER?

 

[anoccasionalyachtsman]

There is something amis here then. In the early 80's I worked full time for a sailing centre on the Clyde which had a significant racing slant to it's business model. I frequently took boats out where the rigging was tuned by sailing close hauled. This was by riggers and a well known sail maker based on the Clyde.

Odd that. It was a Clyde boat that had the chainplate ripped out. But I'm sure that there's no connection.

 

[Quandary]

Odd that. It was a Clyde boat that had the chainplate ripped out. But I'm sure that there's no connection.

I would love to learn more about this, which boat, or if you have forgotten the name just the class would do?

 

[anoccasionalyachtsman]

I would love to learn more about this, which boat, or if you have forgotten the name just the class would do?

I can't remember the boat or its owner's name, MG335 in 1987/8. I've a feeling it was an ex-Kip demo boat and it was at about the same time as some of the Clyde Sigmas were replacing the standard backstay systems and giving David Thomas and if I recall correctly, the class association, sleepless nights.

 

[rotrax]

I can't remember the boat or its owner's name, MG335 in 1987/8. I've a feeling it was an ex-Kip demo boat and it was at about the same time as some of the Clyde Sigmas were replacing the standard backstay systems and giving David Thomas and if I recall correctly, the class association, sleepless nights.

In one of Tom Cunliffe's earlier books he touches on rig tension. He relays the story of an owner who noticed his shrouds flapping when hard on the wind. He tensioned them, noticed the same on the other tack, tensioned them too.

In Tom's words, IIRC "Whereupon his garboard opened up like a flashers zip!"

Wise words........................

 

[Stemar]

Maybe the trick, assuming, of course, a standard masthead rig, is to wind up half the slack on one side then do the other one.

I always know when a rigger has overtightened my rigging - the toilet door bolt won't go in its hole

 

[[3889]]

So you know about LOLER?

No, nothing at all beyond what it stands for. At the risk of becoming boringly repetetive, I will reiterate that there is no statutory requirement, in the circumstances described by the OP, for a crane to be utilised to raise a person up a mast so LOLER has as much significance in this instance as the Display Screen Equipment regs: none whatsoever. Incidentally, do you suggest that the vast majority of riggers who do ascend masts on the vessels own systems are breaking the law?

 

[Quandary]

I can't remember the boat or its owner's name, MG335 in 1987/8. I've a feeling it was an ex-Kip demo boat and it was at about the same time as some of the Clyde Sigmas were replacing the standard backstay systems and giving David Thomas and if I recall correctly, the class association, sleepless nights.

Should not be too hard to follow up though quite a while ago, not that many 335sin CYCA list.
In 87/88 there were about 40 Sigma 33s racing in the Scottish Series including ourselves, great fun at the first windward mark, can not recall any back stay issues at the time, plenty of power in the standard set up though we did not use ours much.

 

[Deleted member 36384]

Odd that. It was a Clyde boat that had the chainplate ripped out. But I'm sure that there's no connection.

Yes, it is odd, now that you recall the boat, that its chain plates ripped out. As this was not common I suspect the oddness was from the people who were doing it.

I think we need to understand that the mast is set up on shore, then tuned at sea. Even the Selden Manual discusses tuning at sea. I know for a fact that when the rigger detects something, the boat is not brought back to the pontoon to make adjustments, they are done at sea.

Perhaps in your example, they did not know what they were doing.

 

[anoccasionalyachtsman]

Should not be too hard to follow up though quite a while ago, not that many 335sin CYCA list.
In 87/88 there were about 40 Sigma 33s racing in the Scottish Series including ourselves, great fun at the first windward mark, can not recall any back stay issues at the time, plenty of power in the standard set up though we did not use ours much.

In which case, you probably know the then lowly solicitor who defended the builder!