Standing Rigging

We replaced the standing rigging and used Sta-Loks for the new rig. I stripped the mast, Port Townsend Rigging did the rest of the work on the standing rigging. I did assemble one Sta-Lok for one of the whisker stays, for educational purposes. We like the Sta-Loks and prefer the versatility they give us - we can end-for-end all wires after a few years to even the weathering of the wire. Unfortunately the next time we re-rig we'll have a few Sta Loks to replace since our lowers are now the wrong size - 3/8 instead of 5/16.

Things aren't fitting

We had a few delays re-stepping the mast including a wrapped messenger inside the mast and a bobstay that wouldn't fit. We moved the boat from Port Hadlock to Boat Haven for re-stepping. By the time the halyards were straightened out we discovered the lower bobstay didn't fit even though PT Rigging had measured everything. PT Rigging sent me down to the boat with a micrometer to measure the lower bobstay fitting. Dan (PT Rigging owner) and I ended up yelling at each other over the bobstay. I thought they should have managed to buy parts that fit and refused to motor back to Hadlock without a bobstay. Dan planned on grinding it down to fit, when I questioned the strength of the fitting he refused to work on it anymore! They ended up grinding it down, I'd only call it "machining" if there had been some forethought.

Rig tune, anyone?

The mast finally went up and all the wires were cranked down. One of PT Rigging's employees grabbed a lower in each hand and climbed the mast to the spreaders to disengage the crane. He slid back down the lowers. No harness, no safety, no nothing! How do these people get insurance? We rented a slip for the night.

The next morning they came back to tighten everything down and put cotter pins in the turnbuckles. We readied the boat to return to our temporary slip in Port Hadlock. I didn't see any tension gages and ask about tuning - PT Rigging told me they didn't use Loos gages, just cranked everything down evenly. "You can tune it under sail if you want, but it's probably fine right now." We found out later the mast wasn't even in straight at this point. I didn't notice until later that our lowers were now 3/8" instead of the 5/16" wire they were when the boat arrived in Port Townsend.

Straighten and Tune

We asked Toss Rigging to tune and inspect the rig. Brion was surprised that the lowers were now 3/8" since it makes the rig harder to tune. He also straightened the mast in the boat - now the floorboards around the mast fit again!

So why are the lowers now 3/8?

Some months later we asked Lisa at PT Rigging why they had changed the wire size on our lowers. She told us the current wire size matched the "spec" she had written up on our boat - perhaps we should have a copy? We declined. A few months later our surveyor was on board to survey the boat for the fourth time since we'd bought it. As he walked up the deck he asked why we had increased the wire size of the lowers. Seems like everyone knew the right size but our riggers!

Even if our lowers had been 3/8 to start with I would expect any competent rigger to question the sizing. Lowers are generally a size smaller so they better match the stretch in the uppers. My fault for not noticing when the mast was re-stepped, but it never occurred to me I had to watch PT Rigging's work so closely. We paid them way too much money to need that level of oversight. Too bad we can't send them to one of Toss' seminars, then they'd also know why our lowers should be a smaller wire size.

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