Standing rigging in Dyneema?

oldbilbo

oldbilbo

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I'm considering the question of replacing s/s standing rigging and turnbuckles on a 32' mast with S.A. 290 sq.ft/ 27 sq.m.

Has anyone any experience to share re a refit with Dyneema/SK75/equivalent and those aluminium ring-thingies?
 
Nobody since have tried Dyneema standing rigging? My build project is reaching the stage where I am thinking of rigging, and planning to use deadeyes. Local riggers shrug and say they dunno about that. Dyneema seems a possibility. Comments?
 
Depends on what sort of boat. it has been used in high tech racing boats and on small performance boats, either as replacement for wire or to tension stays instead of rope lashing or turnbuckles.

No real advantage on a cruising boat.
 
It costs more than wire (look up prices for those Colligo bits), doesn't last as long and you have to really watch out for chafe. It also creeps, so you have to check and adjust tension regularly.

On the upside, it weighs quite a bit less.

If you would like to do your own rig, you can splice it yourself, but splicing slippery rope is actually trickier than just doing up a swageless wire fitting.

So it's well suited to the racing crowd where weight aloft matters more and money (and shorter lifespan) matter less, and they fiddle with their rig tension constantly anyways (some have pins on velcro strips in their turnbuckles). Although racers have other options too, such as Dyform or rod rigging.

As others said, for a cruiser I wouldn't go down down that road. For DIY I'd go swageless (Petersen Hi-Mod are nice, or Sta-Lok) or beg/borrow/steal a roller swager.
 
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Yes on racing boats BUT it was generally replaced each season.

My view for what its worth is I will change to dyneema for my backstay, lowers, inters and babystay.
However I'll currently stick with ss for caps and forestay until I see more long term evidence.
Concerned about wear at spreader tips and bearing wear in furler spar.
I'm 100% sold for a couple of years but currently only 75% confident for 5 years.
I will in addition change all my heavy halyard and mast head shackles and snapshackles for soft loops.
 
coenvanwyk said:
Nobody since have tried Dyneema standing rigging? My build project is reaching the stage where I am thinking of rigging, and planning to use deadeyes. Local riggers shrug and say they dunno about that. Dyneema seems a possibility. Comments?
Click to expand...

Just to add a bit - if that steel boat in the blogspot is your project then conventional wire rigging is the way to go. No benefit in even rod rigging.
 
I have a Dyneema backstay, now it it's second season, it's a swept back 7/8th rig, so doesn't need a backstay to keep the mast up, it's just used to bend the mast and tension the forestay. The rest is rod rigging.

The only problem I've had is noise, the dyneema vibrates, vortex shedding, and locks-in and resonates at different frequencies depending on the wind speed and tension in the stay. Originally it made one hell of a noise and caused some of the panels down below to resonate.

To cure it I got the rigger to wind a 2mm nylon twine around the dyneema at about a 250mm pitch, using the same principle you see on steels chimneys, where you'll see a spiral welded on the upper section of the chimney. This has damped the resonance significantly, to the point where it's no longer a problem.

Using dyneema saves a significant amount of weight on a stay which is about 23m long.

I'd be very reluctant to use it for the rest of the rigging, not because it's not strong enough, but because to the noise it makes when tensioned.

Similar problems have been reported on this forum when replacing the topping lift with dyneema, they can be very noisy.
 
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