Rigging info request

[Guest]

I am refitting a traditionaly built 31.5ft wooden bamuda sloop for extended cruising and need to replace all the rigging due to age and all the deck gear because it never really had any. She currently has a good deck steped alloy mast of about 37ft on a 10.5ft beam. I want a very simple system that acan be repaied by me without access to hight tech rigging services and which will minimeise problems of fatigue chaf etc.
The ideal system seams to be to go back to a traditional arangement using galvanised wire to dead eyes and lanyard and to use wire halyards into wire winches. Although I have seen some new gaffers which keep to this I have never heard of it being done on a bamuda rig with its higher beam to mast hight ratio and higher forstay tension.
Anyone know about boats that have tried this or of a good book on traditional rigging which might give the design data needed.
If there is a professional rigging service with experience in this area I am quite happy to pay someone to advise me or build the rigging set.
I can make up my own dead eyes and calvanised fittings if needed.

Roly, Voya Con Dios, Glasson, Lancaster

 

[Mirelle]

Books - there are a couple of good books Ross Norgrove wrote a good book on crusing boat rigging and Brion Toss has written pretty much the standard book on traditional rigging - read both books as they cover different ground.

I would not use deadeyes and lanyards on a Bermuda rig; I have them myself on my gaff cutter but they are much, much more work to set up than are rigging screws and they cannot be set up to the tension that bermudian rigging calls for.

I definitely would never use wire halyards to wire halyard winches; these are diabolical contraptions and can be thoroughly dangerous. They are slow in operation when hoisting and erratic when lowering. Use wire halyards if you like, but put a block in the end and run a 2:1 terylene purchase through it - the drift of the fibre rope with the sail set will be ninimal and there will be no significant windage whilst you have all the controllability of fibre.

 

[Plum]

I also recommend the book by Brion Toss (but note that this book has a different title in the USA to the one sold in the UK - Riggers Apprentice in the USA, Rigging Handbook in the UK). I recommend Stainless steel wire and fittings with hand splices on the ends of the wire. Buy your wire from industial distributors/manufacturers at a third the chandler price and splice the ends yourself. This way you can afford to keep some in stock and make up new stays anywhere in the world. Replacing them at 10 yearly intervals, as some insurers insist on, then becomes much less of an expense.

 

[Guest]

Thanks - got the book and it gives everything I need so now I am going to learn to wire splice

Roly, Voya Con Dios, Glasson, Lancaster