Rigging for gaff

[AlexHall]

Hi am new to forum, but have already found it of assistance.

I have just completed the dirty work of rebuilding an Alan Buchanan, 33' gaff cutter, steel 1959. I have the all the original bits of rig and can confidently say I can piece it back to gether soon enough to go sailing. But my quiery has to do with the standing parts first and running second. My standing is 7x7 stainless with Talurt/Nicopress eyes aloft sitting onbolsters, down below Noresman swagless.

My existing running is a single thus: peak and throat are single lines going to a block each at their respective points on the mast, must add that the blocks are hanging aloft on bosters and eyes aswell, these single lines have an stiff eye at the hauling end to wh is attached a 3:1 tackle, respectively one each.
A similar arrangment applies to the hanked on jib, but 2:1 , the stays'l is just a single which could easily be sweated up due to its small size.

Sheeting is simple and bullet proof no horses/travellers for main or stays'l just two eye bolts each. and a 4:1 purchace for main and 2:1 for stays'l. Jib just single sheetss to the deck house.

Must add that the boat has never had winches and has only recently (4 years ago) been given an engine to speak of. She had a long shaft Seagull for the first 14 years of her life followed by an air cooled Lister without reduction and the latest a Perkins perama. The running back stays are led to Highfield levers. The only winch she had was an manual SL for the 3/8" X 90' chain.

I have no intention if possible of adding winches and would rather rely on tackles, have installed a decent Maxwell 1200Watt vertical windlass with warping drum instead of the Simpson lawrence.

So does any body have any suggestions to these questions please,
1) Due to the work hardening of SS wire shall I change to Galv, naturally splicing both ends?
2) Is the existing arrangment for the main halyards fine or can they be improved upon?
3)Sheeting, any ideas.

Thanks and please keep this forum setup as it is, the other one I log on to, Spartalk has changed the setup and is not as user riendly as it was, but still very informative.

 

[Mirelle]

Have you contacted Alan Buchanan? I wlould do so as a first stop. He lives in Jersey and is still active.

Meanwhile....

1. Well, it depends how old it is and I would be guided by your insurer's requirements. Most insurance companies seem to want 10 year old s/s replaced.

2. The arrangement that you have is a good and practical one and was advocated by F.B. Cooke. It is not the "traditional" method but it was common a few years ago and it has the advantage of having less windage due to less rope aloft. I have used it (on a smaller boat) and had no trouble for 10 years. I am assuming that the single parts are flexible wire over wire blocks?

I don't care for your sheeting arrangements if I understand them properly. Single eyes midships?

If there are eyes each side for the staysail and the staysail sheets go from the deck through a block at the clew back through a deck eye and aft then that is a fine and traditional system and no need to change it. I personally prefer a double ended mainsheet i.e. 3 blocks on deck if she has a counter and the middle block on a horse or on a stengthened bit of stern rail if she has a transom or Norwegian stern.

 

[AlexHall]

Hi Mirelle,
Thanks for the quick reply. Just to fill you in, yes have spoken to A. Buchanan quite a few times and managed to obtain the whole lot of plans, G.A., Lines, Sail Plan, Cradle, and various small bits regarding contruction and layout. But unfortunately there are no specs for the rigging, other than a spec sheet which A.B. sent me regarding a similar displacement craft from the period BUT bermudan rigged. And no deck plan.

As for sheeting there are no blocks midships, the main just has a block with becket on the S'brd side a single to port and a double on the boom. there for just having a single working part. The stays'l just has a single block to s'brd, a single block on the boom; the sheet is attached to a deck eye on the port side, led up to the stays'l boom and down to the other block to s'brd and then led aft.
I suppose i can fit a horse for both, but would there be much to gain? On this rig. Alternatively i can easily fit a central block on the stern withot much trouble as the tiller comes through the transom, so i can fit a substantial eye to the inboard face of transom above tiller. I am trying to keep the deck as uncluttered as possible which is why i would try and avoid a horse but if the benifits out weigh this Ill fit one.Benefits implying climbing to windward.
Sheeting for the headsails is insufficient I believe, the stays'l maybe not. But as for the jib and jib tops'l I find it hard to believe that a single line fastened to a cleat would suffice.Any reccomendations? Just to remind you, there have never been any winches any where other than a eggbeater for the 90' x 3/8'' anchor chain!
Again if I must fit two for the headsails, again to improve the winward work so be it. But I'd love to hear others points of view here

As for the running rigging, no, all blocks are Tufnol, the very 60's type of block. And the single line going aloft is 14mm braid. Too much stretch you think? or concerned about the nip?

My biggest dilemma are the standing parts. And doesnt have much to do with the age as this year or next they will be replaced. The question is with what? 10mm/3/8" stainless 7x7, is amply strong for this weight of boat. The worry is having soft eyes aloft held with just Talurit/Nicopress. The existing set up is an eye just slightly larger that the diameter of the mast at hounds, an place over the bolsters, thus the Talurit is laying horizontally on bolster, cable exits Talurit, rounds the edge of bolster and then down to the deck. Is this correct? or should the eye be larger so that 2 things occour; 1) the pull on the talurit will not be so obtuse there by minimising the seperating effect of the tension in cable.2) the Exit of the cable from the Talurit will be fair rather than having a 60° turn just after the copper.
What do you think? Also shall I stick to Stainless, not withstanding work hardening of the stuff especially aloft?

Thanks for this your input, its is always a help. My approach to this is to keep her as simple as possible, for ease of maintenance especially in places away from average commodities, whilst improving her mediocre windward performance. But not at the expence of safety.

Just a small note about Orlando, for the first 14 years she just had a clutchless Seagull, only to be replaced by an air cooled 3 cylinder reductionless Lister!! Rather the Seagull. She presently has a small perkins perama courtesy of her previous owners. So the basic concept was correct of keeping her simple ie enginless, she is still wire less, no electrical installation other than engine staritng 3 nav lights and VHF. Oil and solid fuel supply light and heat!

 

[Mirelle]

Staysail arrangement sounds OK - I had not reailsed it is a boom staysail. I have an 8mm flexible s/s wire across the deck just ahead of the mast, with a Wichard hook so you can clear it out of the way when washing the decks, as a horse, this also works OK.

I would be very much inclined to change the mainsheet arrangement so as to have a double ended mainsheet, i.e. single blocks on each quarter, a single amidships and either a double or ideally two singles (slightly better lead) on the boom.

I would not be very happy with single part jib sheets. Possible - but it depends on you getting the jib sheeted at just the right moment each time you tack. We had two part jib sheets with clew blocks until we fitted the winches.

I think 14mm braidline for the standing part of the halyards, with Tufnol blocks, is very practical, and you will not suffer much stretch.

10mm wire is a bit OTT, may be. 8mm should do. I agree that the soft eyes seem too short, and they should be longer, to allow the Talurits to lie fair. I would use galvanised wire.

 

[Plum]

Hi Alex. Regarding your standing rigging. I too had nicopress on soft eyes on bolsters with the ferule touching the bolster which gave a poor lead to the wire. It is certainly not healthy. I changed my shrouds last year to hand spliced stainless 7X7. I chose to go SS over Galv, although it was a close call, mainly because I found 8mm 7X7 SS wire for GBP2 per metre which was not much more that Galv, and as I did the splicing myself it would not be too costly to re-rig in, say 10 or 15 years time, and in the meantime there is one less thing to maintain.

I recommend the Rigging Handbook by Brion Toss

 

[AlexHall]

Thanks Mirelle,

Great to hear your views. So a double ended mainsheet would be better, With or without a horse? Would there be much improvment to windward with it? I suppose I can always rig a vang to reduce twist. What do you think?

You mentioned having split sheets for the jib, so basically each side deck had two attachment points for the sheet, one where it was fastened and the other with a block or bullseye leading to cleat? If thats the case did you have 2 small blocks at the jibs clew? I have seen some horrible arrangments, whilst on some day boats I have raced, like the Melges there were two little Harken blocks one for each sheet. But not withstanding these sheets led to small winches.
What sizes of winches have you installed? Where? Are they exclusively for the jib sheets?

I couldn't agree better with you that the standing rigging 10mm is OTT but as pointed out to me by the previous owner this was done to compensate for the potential damaged that could be caused by work hardening. There is some merit in this but the fact that the eyes are too small negated any benefits.

As for the size of the eyes.........., would i be correct in saying the larger (within reason) they are the less stress at the splice or Talurit? Would double the mast diameter at hounds be too much? I would probably go for splices aloft myself and swageless down below if I was going to remain with SS. How serious is the risk of work hardening the SS at the hounds with this rig? Has it been tried successfully? What are the chances of failure? Big questions.
I suspect you must be with galvanised too, if so some great gunge to use on it is a product called TCN 300 which is an epoxy tar used in higly corrosive enviroments, made by SIGMA PAINTS. I read an earlier posting by you yesterday i believe.
Have you parcelled and served all the way, top to bottom eyes and all?

Seeing I've never sailed her, I was going to rig her with what she came and try her out, (standing rigging wise), at least to check lengths and position. But would try and arrange the running set up before I do. I wouldn't like to spend a good couple of days splicing to find that i got the lengths wrong!!

Talking about splicing wire are there any reasonable splicing vices around, I know Brion Toss has for sale but at $700 a pop excluding freight I'd try and look elsewhere. Or did you do yours on your lap?

Thank you very much, looking forward to your views

 

[AlexHall]

Hi Plum thanks for your reply, I couldnt agree more with you. But you used 8mm SS, on what size and weight of craft? how large did you make the eyes in respect to the mast diameter? What did you do for the lower end? Spliced hard eyes or fittings?
Do you have winches for your jib sheeting, if so what size, if not, what?

As you used SS are you not concerned about work hardening the the stuff? Did you have galvanized before?
Thanks for your input and looking forward to your views.

 

[Plum]

If you can get hold of the May/June 2002 edition of Watercraft magazine (http://www.watercraft.co.uk/backs.htm) you will see a photograph of my rigging vice which I made myself and used for both the top soft eyes and the hard (thimble) spliced eyes at the bottom of the shrouds.

My boat is a 5tonner Falmouth Working Boat (by Martin Heard) so much smaller than yours. I actually needed 7mm wire but could not get it at the right price so went for 8mm which, as per your thinking, will significantly extend the fatigue life.

Regarding the size of the soft eyes, depends on the type of bolsters you have, but don't make them too big as with some arrangements the eye can slip off the bolster. Brion Toss's book explains how to calculate the size of the eye, but I cut a disk of timber the same diameter as the mast, and attached a bolster of the same size, so I could mock up an eye in the workshop until it looked right. I found this most beneficial as I could add the plastic tube and the leather sleeve to the wire and see how these affected the lay and how they affected the overall length of the wire.

 

[AlexHall]

Hi, thats more like it!! just the kind of info I'm looking for, thanks Plum. I think the only copy of the Waterman I have is the one of which you speak!.

Nice boat and good article, many thanks.