Rigging or sea cocks replacement

[Tranona]

So why do you think that is?

Well, I would like to think that is the result of a rigorous survey of claims for rig failures, identifying where the risk is in terms of, for example type of boat, location, conditions and even cause of failure. However insurers have never published such information nor indicated that it exists.

Observation suggests that failures are small in number and focused on particular types of boats and usage and yeet they come up with a blanket time limit for everybody with no evidence to support it.

So, I think it is laziness.

 

[PhillM]

I don't think anyone has asked about the planned usage this season. If the boat is only going to be used for local passages in good weather, the rigging could well be inspected and left alone for another year. If longer passages in moderate (with the chance of bad) weather then I might prioritise that, especially if the seacocks look OK.

TBH, that is what I did with Swift. While the seacocks are in poor shape (old rusty ball valves) they were solid in the hull and didn't leak, so last year I did the rig . This year I will be doing the seacocks.

 

[oldharry]

We all accept a level of risk when we step onboard.
I can think of no other instance of ‘the man in the street’ being so easily and quickly able to put themselves into such an alien and life threatening environment as being afloat and offshore, just by driving for a couple of hours or so to the coast and skippering something that be widely bought for just a few £1000.
The risks can be on par with winter mountaineering or flying small aircraft, but far easier to facilitate.

Yet the evidence is very clearly that the risk of serious injury or fatality and serious damage to property is in massively higher while at the wheel of the car driving to the boat than while on it. MAIB reports investigating 1530 leisure boat accidents involving 14 deaths in 2021. Thats a whole lot less than the 27,450 people who lost their lives on the roads in 2021 even allowing for the fact many more people use the roads.

I would say the sea is no less alien and life threatening than the M25 or similar!

In a sense the OP's question is rather like asking should I replace the tyres or the brakes on my car first? We all know that the consequences of not replacing either when needed can be both disasterous and fatal. The same goes for rigging and seacocks, so the deciding factor must be 'when necessary'. Old rigging with an unknown history is a potentially serious hazard, and without further evidence any rigger would recommend replacement. Seacocks on the other hand can be easily checked while the boat is ashore, as described by several above. I was interested to read above that they only had a 5 year life expectancy. I have never owned a boat that is at not at least twice that age, yet I have never had a failure, and only once identified a need to replace a corroded one. I have on the other hand replaced several sets of rigging where there was no record of age, but only once have I seen actual evidence that failure was imminent. SA I said before, SS wire often gives no warning of impending failure. If one wire has broken, the rst is about to follow! Personally I never let it go that far. Same thinking as wearing an LJ. In 70+ years of pottering about afloat, including several years working afloat professionally, I never ever actually needed the LJ's I wore , or left on its hook.

But we almost certainly would have lost my son if he had not been wearing one when he went OB from his dinghy.....

 

[doug748]

As post 41, I doubt insurers take much interest in the cause of rig loss. They may know they pay out more on old boats, so get fussy with old boats. If you know little about the cause of dismasting then you might think that wire and terminal replacement solves the problem. But does it? Perhaps in a way.

The only very close shave I have had was due to a U bolt breakage. From observation I see a lot of older boats that look as if the rig has been up and uninspected for 30 years, maybe all those boats need is inspection and obvious problems being sorted. Standing wire replacement is a blunt and expensive tool for insurers to ensure that the thing has been looked at by someone who knows.

On another point.
Do insurers actually insist on the replacement of rigging wire at set intervals? Or is it maybe only when they are taking on new business? Can anyone comment?
Again it's possibly one of the things that come up in the survey, we can write this stuff ourselves: "The rigging looked in good condition at deck level and was locked properly. I was unable to inspect further. The age of the rig is unknown" Then the insurers jump on it.

From my experience; my insurers have never suggested I replace rigging in the 25 years I have been with them. Furthermore they:

Have never asked for any survey
Don't mind where I moor the boat
Are not interested in when, or if, I take the boat out for the winter.

So maybe some of the things we hear about insurers have a little bit of the urban myth about them?

.

 

[Dellquay13]

Yet the evidence is very clearly that the risk of serious injury or fatality and serious damage to property is in massively higher while at the wheel of the car driving to the boat than while on it. MAIB reports investigating 1530 leisure boat accidents involving 14 deaths in 2021. Thats a whole lot less than the 27,450 people who lost their lives on the roads in 2021 even allowing for the fact many more people use the roads.

I would say the sea is no less alien and life threatening than the M25 or similar!

In a sense the OP's question is rather like asking should I replace the tyres or the brakes on my car first? We all know that the consequences of not replacing either when needed can be both disasterous and fatal. The same goes for rigging and seacocks, so the deciding factor must be 'when necessary'. Old rigging with an unknown history is a potentially serious hazard, and without further evidence any rigger would recommend replacement. Seacocks on the other hand can be easily checked while the boat is ashore, as described by several above. I was interested to read above that they only had a 5 year life expectancy. I have never owned a boat that is at not at least twice that age, yet I have never had a failure, and only once identified a need to replace a corroded one. I have on the other hand replaced several sets of rigging where there was no record of age, but only once have I seen actual evidence that failure was imminent. SA I said before, SS wire often gives no warning of impending failure. If one wire has broken, the rst is about to follow! Personally I never let it go that far. Same thinking as wearing an LJ. In 70+ years of pottering about afloat, including several years working afloat professionally, I never ever actually needed the LJ's I wore , or left on its hook.

But we almost certainly would have lost my son if he had not been wearing one when he went OB from his dinghy.....

I would find the comparison of risk (hazard x severity of outcome x likely hood) of single car journeys compared to single outings on a boat interesting, if anyone has it.
You could get out of your car on the M25 hard shoulder, as opposed to a boat crossing say from Conwy to IoM. A bit obvious of me to say really. My point was, alien and life threatening environments far from a quick refuge, like extreme cold or altitude, that can kill within minutes are a lot less easy to access on a Sunday afternoon than the sea.
But thread drift is arriving here.

 

[Zing]

I would guess that stainless wire suffers from fatigue failure or aerobic corrosion at swaged fittings more than anything. You can guess how fatigue failure can be caused with a rig cycling through high tension and low tension as the boat bobs up and down or simply through constant but varying re-tensioning of the rig.

By far the main failure mode is from stress corrosion cracking and this occurs where salts corrode what is initially a microscopic sized stress induced crack and the crack slowly grows. Much worse in sea water of course, in warm areas and with high stress. A penetrant dye test can be used to catch a problem well before it fails. 304 and 316 stainless is especially vulnerable to this failure mode..

I think you meant anaerobic corrosion and this is often a compounding issue in swaged wire (and a major issue with embedded chain plates). Fatigue failure is a rare issue as most rigs, especially cruising rigs are very lightly loaded at a level close to the fatigue limit.

 

[Zing]

Yet the evidence is very clearly that the risk of serious injury or fatality and serious damage to property is in massively higher while at the wheel of the car driving to the boat than while on it. MAIB reports investigating 1530 leisure boat accidents involving 14 deaths in 2021. Thats a whole lot less than the 27,450 people who lost their lives on the roads in 2021 even allowing for the fact many more people use the roads.

I would say the sea is no less alien and life threatening than the M25 or similar!

In a sense the OP's question is rather like asking should I replace the tyres or the brakes on my car first? We all know that the consequences of not replacing either when needed can be both disasterous and fatal. The same goes for rigging and seacocks, so the deciding factor must be 'when necessary'. Old rigging with an unknown history is a potentially serious hazard, and without further evidence any rigger would recommend replacement. Seacocks on the other hand can be easily checked while the boat is ashore, as described by several above. I was interested to read above that they only had a 5 year life expectancy. I have never owned a boat that is at not at least twice that age, yet I have never had a failure, and only once identified a need to replace a corroded one. I have on the other hand replaced several sets of rigging where there was no record of age, but only once have I seen actual evidence that failure was imminent. SA I said before, SS wire often gives no warning of impending failure. If one wire has broken, the rst is about to follow! Personally I never let it go that far. Same thinking as wearing an LJ. In 70+ years of pottering about afloat, including several years working afloat professionally, I never ever actually needed the LJ's I wore , or left on its hook.

But we almost certainly would have lost my son if he had not been wearing one when he went OB from his dinghy.....

Check your car deaths. You will find it’s near to a twentieth of that figure.

 

[Fr J Hackett]

By far the main failure mode is from stress corrosion cracking and this occurs where salts corrode what is initially a microscopic sized stress induced crack and the crack slowly grows. Much worse in sea water of course, in warm areas and with high stress. A penetrant dye test can be used to catch a problem well before it fails. 304 and 316 stainless is especially vulnerable to this failure mode..

I think you meant anaerobic corrosion and this is often a compounding issue in swaged wire (and a major issue with embedded chain plates). Fatigue failure is a rare issue as most rigs, especially cruising rigs are very lightly loaded at a level close to the fatigue limit.

Yes I did mean anaerobic and that is what I thought I had typed.

 

[Daydream believer]

In my experience insurers are either very clever or very stupid. I can not figure out which. I am in the process of renewal of my student sons car insurance policy. Young person in Manchester city centre. Last year adding myself as a named driver reduced the premium by 30%. This year removing me from the policy reduced the premium by 35%. Nothing has changed. Changing from parking on the driveway to parking on the street overnight reduced the premium by a further 10%.

Makes no sense from a risk point of view that I can see. Only thing I can think of to explain is that they are quoting the renewal sky high and hoping we would just accept and making up reasons to reduce it to stop us cancelling with them.

Insurance companies look at the claims history & apply the relevant algorithms to get the trends & assess risk. That enables them to determine a premium against the perceived risk. They then apply a marketing strategy to that.

Seems like a very clever way to do business. I cannot immediately recall a major failure of an insurance company since the days of Emile Savundra & his Fire Marine & Auto insurance co. (remember "Jackie S") But that was more due to fraudulent activity, than anything else. Poor chap "lost everything" & was only able to go to his bankrupcy hearing because his wife loaned him the use of her Rolls Royce.
Of course members of a few Lloyds syndicates will recall the Piper Alpha disaster which upset a few peoples fortunes. Plus few people who had invested in the Sass syndicate some years earlier
But that is a different animal to the " Navigators & General & Direct Line" that we are talking about.

 

[penfold]

Rigging on a moored boat is still subject to cyclical stressing as it moves, and much more so on an exposed moorings where the boat is constantly rocking. Stainless is well known to be vulnerable to cyclical stress loading and failure with little or no warning.

Anecdotally I have noted that smaller boats(<25' but especially <20') of low value often have their rigging slacker than braces with perished elastic, far more so than with larger vessels; with no evidence I attribute this to them being owned by beginners who have sought no advice or have ignored any given.

 

[lustyd]

In the case of my old boat it was slack because a previous owner replaced the bottle screws. Modern ones are longer than the originals, hence the slack. Probably quite a common issue as corrosion gets the old screws.

 

[oldharry]

Check your car deaths. You will find it’s near to a twentieth of that figure.

Correct. That is the KSI figure for 2021 (Killed or Seriously Injured). There were 1,558 fatalities.

 

[Tranona]

As post 41, I doubt insurers take much interest in the cause of rig loss. They may know they pay out more on old boats, so get fussy with old boats. If you know little about the cause of dismasting then you might think that wire and terminal replacement solves the problem. But does it? Perhaps in a way.

The only very close shave I have had was due to a U bolt breakage. From observation I see a lot of older boats that look as if the rig has been up and uninspected for 30 years, maybe all those boats need is inspection and obvious problems being sorted. Standing wire replacement is a blunt and expensive tool for insurers to ensure that the thing has been looked at by someone who knows.

On another point.
Do insurers actually insist on the replacement of rigging wire at set intervals? Or is it maybe only when they are taking on new business? Can anyone comment?
Again it's possibly one of the things that come up in the survey, we can write this stuff ourselves: "The rigging looked in good condition at deck level and was locked properly. I was unable to inspect further. The age of the rig is unknown" Then the insurers jump on it.

From my experience; my insurers have never suggested I replace rigging in the 25 years I have been with them. Furthermore they:

Have never asked for any survey
Don't mind where I moor the boat
Are not interested in when, or if, I take the boat out for the winter.

So maybe some of the things we hear about insurers have a little bit of the urban myth about them?

.

Not a myth - much as you describe. The rig replacement is prompted by a survey, either because it is a new proposal OR the boat is 40 (or 50) years old so you may be getting the call. The 10 years derives from requiring replacement if there is no evidence of replacement within the last 10 years, although an inspection report may be acceptable IF you can find a rigger to do it in writing for the insurer - my experience is riggers are reluctant. They will give a oral report for you, but not a written report for insurers because that puts the liability onto them. The 10 years has become a standard response through the constant "telling" a bit like "2 keel bolts should be drawn for inspection", "seacocks have a life expectancy of 5 years" and "all hoses should be double clipped". No evidential basis for any of these (and others) but they are stock phrases in surveyors reports. What else can a surveyor say other than the comment you mention. If it is a sailing boat he has to say something about the rig and that is about as honest as he can be, and if there is no evidence of recent inspection that would come in his advisory. As you say insurers will then use it as a basis for a condition. On the positive side with my GH I used the surveyor's recommendations and advisories as a basis for my work and when I came to renew I submitted a report of the work done together with a revised valuation to up the insured value from £15-36K.

BTW with my old Eventide I insured with the same company from late 1990s based on a 1992 survey after a major refit. Premium hardly changed but in 2017 "new" rules survey required for 40 years and over (it was 54 years old then). I sold it in 2019 without a survey as it had been laid up and new owner could only get third party.

 

[Frank Holden]

My boat is an 1986 Westerly - rig fell down in 1994 - failure of t-ball fitting - port lower.
All OK up until I renewed all standing rigging in 2003 at 9 years old.
Failure of stbd lower U/Bolt / tang thingo in nearly lost me the mast in 2014 - U/bolts had been replaced in Argentina only 4 years earlier.
All standing rigging replaced including turnbuckles and chain plates in 2013/15.

You do not have to replace all rigging at once - start with just the lowers. Take the opportunity to replace any t/ball type fittings with tangs. The RigShop (?) in Fareham(?) sells kits.

I believe the rule of thumb is something like 10 years or a circumnavigation.

Original Blakes seacocks ? Only one replaced 12 years ago with another blakes. I discovered when renewing the main bog discharge hose that there was wastage on the tail within the hose end - too many vindaloos maybe?

Three non blakes seacocks have been replaced --- two on the cockpit drains and the engine cooling intake.

 

[Dutch01527]

Decision is getting more difficult. I had decided on replacing the standing rigging and servicing/inspecting the sea cocks.

Very helpful rigger came to quote today. He said that the rig was in excellent condition as far as a visual inspection could ascertain. He cautioned that a visual inspection can only go so far and it should be changed because of age. However, the furling gear is obsolete and would not come apart without damage because the stainless fitting at the base would be seized into the aluminium. I am sure that he was genuine. That will add about £1,800 onto the cost of the job.

There are times when I think that I should take up stamp collecting as a hobby!!!

 

[Stemar]

When I bought Jazzcat, the rig was original from 1984. It hadn't fallen down. OTOH, one of the through hulls was seized and obviously in poor condition. When I went to remove it, it literally came away in my hand. The others all worked, so they got a good welt with a rubber mallet. They survived, so they're still in there. The rig isn't, even though there was nothing visibly wrong with it, and it's cost a bomb, far more than changing all the seacocks would have.

ISTM that a rig is liable to fail without notice or sign of weakness, but seacocks are going to give to give notice of their intention to sink the boat. Provided the seacocks work, they pass the good thump test, and they're easily accessible - imagine the area full of water, with more coming in a LOT faster than is nice to see , I'd tie appropriate wooden bungs to each, and do the rig.