Rigging Checklist

[zoidberg]

A fellow TRSC member kindly sent me his bulletin containing a 'Rigging Checklist' which sparked a memory of a 'near-gotcha'.... which I related to another friend a few thousand miles away with a Sunday morning hangover.

FWIW I copy'paste it here to avoid retyping.

More than a decade ago ( I count now in decades ) I chucked some cans of food and a few beers into a 24' tough old Hurley I'd bought from a friend for a handful of loose change, ran the sails up and down the mast, waggled the tiller, and headed off towards Eire on the mini-Jester Challenge. I had checked the standing rigging very thoroughly, together with fastenings, and had no reservations. About 70 miles short of the Fastnet Rock, a brisk weather front came through. With visibility down to yards, night coming on and well reefed-down, I closed the hatch for some shuteye.

I awoke in the half-dawn. The boat's motion was wrong - a jerking and slamming. We'd somehow been headed and lay hove-to - but the mast was jerking. Something was wrong.
The forestay was slack, and the motion in a left-over sea caused the mast to jerk fore and aft. I crawled forward, and saw immediately that the quality Swedish Hasselfors bottlescrew had unscrewed almost completely. There were scarce 2 turns of thread left holding it - and the mast and sails - all together. Shock-horror!

I spun the barrel of the b'screw up tight again by hand, then looked to see what had gone wrong. Those Hasselfors jobs were among the very best, and utilised little set-screws to lock the barrel. 'Turn in fully to adjust the barrel; wind out halfway to lock the slot.' The boat's normal jerking had caused the 'tight-slack-tight' loading to make the barrel rotate hard about 10 degrees or so, with the little screw coming up hard against the sharp inner edge of the slot. This had chewed away at the head of the little screw until it no longer stopped rotation.... then the continued jerking slowly unwound the assembly until, held by only a couple of turns, it was just about to give way.

I s'pose I was just lucky. Although, in removing the damaged screwhead and inserting a long monel rivet as a bodge, my favourite Molegrip pliers went 'deep sixing' as a gift to Poseidon.

I've thought about that almost-event now and then, and have never encountered another sailor with a similar experience. I'd thought the little screws were 'squaddie-proof' and, unlike the protruding split-pins, they don't snag on sails and skin. But there's always a 'gotcha'.