Yes, doing it yourself will theoretically save money. You could be setting yourself up for some serious problems, as well a spending a lot of unnecessary money into the bargain. On our old boat we had the Port Aft lower shroud fail while sailing. Note wire and pin diameters and measure the wires as accurately as possible between pin centers with the rig fully tensioned. The standing rigging consists of wires supporting the mast on a sailboat and reinforcing the spars from the force of the sails when sailing. The rig or rigging on a sailboat is a common term for two parts, the standing, and the running rigging. VerticalScope Inc., 111 Peter Street, Suite 600, Toronto, Ontario, M5V 2H1, Canada. Cleat the jib off on the port side of the mast and the main on the starboard. What is the average sailboat maintenance cost? After that, you'll need to change them out. Wire rigging is generally less expensive and easier to handle. For a medium-sized boat (30-50 feet), the cost will be somewhere between $2000 and $4000. In this article, I'll show you what to expect. 1. Did you find the answer to your specific question? This line is double braided polyester, so the cover is responsible for carrying up to 30% of the load. You can see that the chafe is only occurring on one side of the line, the side that comes in contact with the sheave. Too narrow for equivalent ropeshould be 10% wider than the diameter of the rope. Replacing the roller-furling control line is an easy do-it-yourself job for the boat owner. Add winches and UV rays and the wear and tear can be significant so it's important to use a quality line. If you have (reasonable) evidence that the PO replaced only the worst sections, it's safe to assume that the rest of the rig is getting ancient and failure prone. [1] Do you want to earn money to write on our website? The latter is very important, as its a common cause of weakness, so wherever possible ensure stainless steel fittings are insulated from an aluminum mast. To avoid excessive wear, make sure your halyard sheaves are the proper type for whatever line you select. Maybe dying or some other high tech test would. Well, for starters, I'd recommend doing most small maintenance yourself and ignore all non-essential. Regardless of how it happened, the integrity of the line has been compromised and it needs to be replaced. NEW FLAT SCREEN 43' TV IN THE SALON - 2019. You can take a masthead halyard from side to side to ensure that the masthead is on center. The latter may indicate two things: one, that its simply surface rust, which you should be able to polish off, or two, that as the wire was being manufactured, a strand might have picked up some contamination during the process and is compromised, which is cause for concern. The cost of replacing the standing rigging is, on average, $4,000 every 10 years. This was most likely caused by something sharp and pointy that poked through the cover and caught on the core. The warm trade winds in the West Indies were calling; time to go sailing. On a sailboat, a distinction is made between running rigging and standing rigging. Specific Gravity is 1.38, so it does not float. You want a reliable boat, which means you'll fix anything that needs fixing immediately. On longer boats, you can opt for a furling-line material of more esoteric double-braids with less stretch. Money well spent. The Estimated Costs of Replacing a Jibs and Genoas Sails for boats measuring 42' to 50' can cost around $5,500-$9,000 Sails for boats measuring 36' to 42' can cost around $4,000-$7,000 Sails for boats measuring 32' to 36' can cost around $3,000-$5,000 Sails for boats measuring 24' to 32' can cost around $2,500-$4,000 read more, 2023 Active Interest Media All Rights Reserved. Wendy Mitman Clarke is currently between passages. A good set of rigging is of great importance in order to ensure navigation without causing any damage. Most people starting out will get a smaller size boat and use it for day trips and weekend trips. 9034 GD Marsum Where you can really save some money, is on the labor. Remove old lifelines and frayed running rigging. A standard 15HP or 20HP outboard gas engine will cost you about $5,000 - $6,000 and needs replacing every 20 years or so. Another factor in your DIY decision-making process is simple: peace of mind. As a basic rule, the replacement of the standing rig should be done every 10 years, except for multihulls or regattas, and rod or composite fiber rigging. Most recent receipt was for lower stays 10 years ago. Learn all about the dangers of failing to winterize here. For all remaining running rigging, you can use polyester double-braid rope. For a 26' sailboat, that's just 500 bucks. The installation of the engine will cost a few hundred to a couple of thousand dollars. Of course, if you have an outboard engine the installation price will be nothing more than a few drops of sweat, swearing, and back pain for a day or two. If you want a life raft, that's another $1,500. Then the swager is used to compress the fitting so tightly that the wires merge into a solid piece of stainless steel and cant pull out (right). Few places on the planet have such a devoted, diverse, and downright joyful yacht racing season as the island read more, Ive never laughed so hard as I have on some of my charters, but its typically only funny after the fact. Adhering to the minimum safety requirements shouldn't cost you more than 150 - 250 dollars every 5 years. Are the chainplates sound? Keep your sailboats mast securely in place by carefully inspecting all of your spars components and replacing parts before you have a breakdown. Chafe usually happens gradually over long periods of time and it is only a serious problem when it goes unnoticed. Do you hire a pro or go it alone? But here are some things we could do out to save some big bucks: Winterizing your boat yourself can cost you as little as $50 for antifreeze and an oil change afterward. The easiest way to prevent line from chafing all the way through is to simply look at your line. On modern boats, chainplates are fitted outboard (right) and covered with a plate that lets water drain. This small cruiser is well built, easy to handle and relatively economical to maintain. The final price depends on two things - what type of engine you have, and how hard it is to get to the starter. But a newly cracked sheave or an exposed cotter pin can quickly shred a line that otherwise would have lasted much longer. Replacing your Standing Rigging with Jimmy Green Marine. we have provided rigging services and have specialized in running rigging. The simple answer is to measure it. Then we head over to Bacon Sails and Marine Supplies for a tu. Both are located in the U.K., and the products are distributed in the U.S. through vendors like Hayn, West Marine, Defender, and local chandleries and riggers. Regardless of what fittings you currently have the choice for multi-stranded wire rigging is between swaged terminals or mechanical fittings. The first decision is whether to tackle the job with the mast up or down. Put together both the pieces of your mast. Many products featured on this site were editorially chosen. Probably the trickiest will be the forestay and backstay, as these carry the greatest loads, although all the standing rigging can be loosened to some degree when at rest. Replacing electronics won't be very important - however, your batteries will need to be replaced more often. Let them know any of your concerns before they get started. (This is true anywhere there are stainless fittings by the way, so be wary of putting too much tape or tight-fitting covers on them.). Personally, Im in favor of it, but if you replace the standing rigging frequentlyevery 10 years, saythen it might not be necessary. Did you know that rope halyards are easier to handle and significantly lighter than wire halyards. Get all your parts together. Sailors' hands are busy with the running rigging most on a sailboat. Youre out there offshore and theres a squall coming and you start worrying about the craziest of things, and you dont want to have any unknowns. Thats especially true of the system that keeps the mast and sails up. Its when the leeward side starts flopping around that youre asking for trouble., Stainless steel has a finite number of cycles essentially, movements, whether fore and aft or side to side. That was a case of not knowing that the worst thing you can do to standing rigging is have it loose on the leeward side, he says. The total maintenance cost for a bluewater cruiser will average around $3,225 per year or $269 per month. Strong, durable lines are essential for controlling the sails on your boat without risking your own safety, or that of the sails. The average cost of a new cruising sailboat is about $250,000. As I have done a fair amount of club racing, my personal preference would be to use any of the above products for everything except the halyards and then go for a lighter, low stretch, high tech product such as New England Ropes T-900 for the halyards and get the eye splices done professionally. I live in Friesland, The Netherlands, which is famous for its great lakes and lots of sailing opportunities. Exhausted In Singapore, For All the Wrong Reasons, Cruising World Takes Multiple Honors in Annual Writing and Photography Contest. The Netherlands So how often should standing rigging be replaced? Best Price Opti Running Rigging Sheets Halyard Line Sailboat Kit 100% Original + FREE Delivery discount activity gsmsharmaji.com, US $174 sail ties Lower Spirit Halyard 1 ea and shock cords One of the best ways to improve an aging Opti is to overhaul and replace all the running rigging Upper Spirit Halyard 1 ea, Free shipping on all orders . Over time, the halyard still moved in the wind and the shroud chafed through the cover, exposing the core. Sometimes it can be very obvious, but other times it is not. There are also a few spots where the chafe is more serious. Learn all about the dangers of failing to winterize here. Do a few turns on one side before going to the other and applying an equal number. Remove the clevis pins at each end if you haven't already, replace the old cable with the new cable, and reinstall the clevis pins. A professional needs roughly 8 hours to get the job done. This process . Thus the standing rigging is made up of all the cables and . One of the most common areas of rig failure is where the shrouds terminateboth at the mast tang or socket fitting and the wire terminal, toggle or T-ball. In other words, if your boat already has rod rigging, with all of the end fittings to terminate the rods both on deck and in or on the mast, then sticking with rod will ultimately be less expensive than making the switch to wire. Then theres just age, and this factor as a reason to re-rig is more subject to a boats history than anything else. The 150 Genoa sheets were 35 feet each as Faster suggests but my halyard lines, which are wire and rope were only 40 feet of rope. If you use your batteries extensively, they will most likely need replacing after 3-4 years, for example, for liveaboards or full-time cruisers. For that reason, its difficult to give an accurate estimate of the cost of making the switch, even for an average 40-footer. You should be mechanically inclined, he says, and the way to find that out is if I start talking all this technical jargon and you decide whether youre suited to handle that at all.. Read more on the lifetime expectancy of marine diesels here. Depending on the answers to those questions and others, a professionally done re-rig for a 40-footer could be closer to $6,000 or more. Your first thought may be to replace this old stuff with some of the bright new high tech line you can find in your local chandlery. Every sailboat has an Out Haul and a Down Haul. I agree with a general average of 20 years for replacing the standing rigging. Use nylon 3-Strand for anchor, dock, mooring and tow lines or polyester 3-strand for running rigging on traditional cruising boats. Sun wear and constant use will wear down the sails and rigging even more. This way you wont risk deforming the mast or pulling a fitting out of line. JavaScript is disabled. Shes the director of media relations at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, and she and her family continue to pine and plan for the day they can return to the cruising life. For a small boat (under 30 feet), you can expect to pay anywhere from $500 to $2000 for standing rigging replacement. Good question. Die testing wont pick it up, and its rare that a wire will give you warning before breaking.. The life span of rigging depends on how heavily a boat has been sailed and on the care taken with tuning. I've read that standing rigging should be replaced anywhere from 10 all the way up to 20 years and also simply based on condition. The Down Haul consists of a line attached to the mast end of the boom. The wire itself rarely fails midway along a shroud, so this makes good sense. Its common to choose to fit lighter swaged terminals at the top of a stay or shroud and mechanical ones at the bottom, where swaged terminals are more vulnerable to corrosion. Now, let's return to the original proposition, which was a complete replacementon three different cost levelsof basic running rigging for a 32 sloop. Skilled marine technicians charge from $75 - $150 per hour. Read more on the cost of antifouling your boat. The average price of new sailboats is $250,000, ranging from $96,000 to $654,000. Technical support for boat owners and maintenance yards servicing Sabre sail and motor yachts | Sabre Yachts Technical Support Contacts in Sabre's After Sales Service Department may be reached by calling 207-655-3831 or by filling in the contact form. The customer had had the boat re-rigged, and during a trip to the BVI, the new wire stretched. Colligo Dux: A relative newcomer to sailboat rigging, Colligo Dux is pre-stretched and heat-treated Dyneema. If youre thinking of buying a used sailboat its probable that your final selection will be a boat that is a few years old and the halyards, mainsheet, backstay, jibsheets and other running rigging will probably look a little old, dirty and frayed. Any line that you have to handle such as jib sheets, halyards and mainsheet should be about half inch (12mm) diameter for a good grip, and jib sheets and mainsheets should be one of the softer feel products. A dormant maneuver has both ends fixed at each end. Madden says that cost isnt linear, though; as you go up in size (a bigger boat needs heavier wire and larger fittings), youll spend more. The mast stayed up, but it sounded like a gun shot and was scary as hell. Have a feel for any rough or sharp edges, especially cotter pin ends that might chafe lines or sails. The benefits of rod are less stretch, less weight, less windage, and arguably longer life than wire, because theres less possibility for corrosion of the rod itself. This is a quick and easy job for a rigger to do and covers can be replaced each season rather than discarding the rope. Clean and lubricate them, then refasten them, and remember to mouse them with new galvanized wire and tape over the ends to avoid chafe. Now is a good time to give it a quick spray with some track lubricant as you descend. The three most commonly used types of attachments are swaged and mechanical fittings for wire, and cold heads for rod. Whether you are setting up the hardware for a trapeze or trying to create the perfect mast rake before a big race with your tension guage, we at MAURIPRO Sailing will meet your Rigging needs. Cruising World may receive financial compensation for products purchased through this site. Theres no reason good quality rigging shouldnt last up to 20 years or so if it is well maintained and any problems that arise are sorted right away. Shrouds and stays should be replaced in pairs, applying just enough tension to support the mast with you climbing it, but not tuned to sail. Standing rigging supports your boat's mast. But Cockerill says it quickly becomes evident whether an owner feels comfortable enough to do the work. With all of these factors in mind, what can you expect to pay for standing rigging replacement? Down Haul. Normal rigging knives and hot knives are almost useless, all turning blocks and sheaves must have a diameter of at least 8 times the line diameter, old sheaves, turning blocks and other hardware will probably not be strong enough for high tech line, high tech line can cost up to $10 per foot. For dry storage, part of the process can be to shrink wrap your boat. This number is reached by assuming that the average cost for materials is around $1,500, 32 hours to fabricate the rigging, and 30 hours to install the rigging. Next check the back and forestay fittings where they connect to the mast, ensuring any clevis pins are straight and secure. The mechanical terminals most commonly used by DIY riggers are Sta-Lok and Norseman terminals. You could consider buying a LED electric distress light instead, which will last you a lifetime. I don't like spam - I will only send helpful content. So youre sailing offshore and youre looking at the windward shroud thats taut, and thats not the one to worry about. Check by sighting up the backside of the mast to see how straight your spar is side to side. Some have an extra light sheet for real light winds so the sheet doesnt weigh the jib down. Mount the masts. Sailboat Rigging. Listing Results for Sailing & Rigging and ENG1 Medical Certificate in Marans, Levallois Perret and Cap D'Agde On this eye splice, the core has herniated out of the cover. However, what you'll actually pay really depends on the type of boat you have and what you do with it. For later reference, photograph each wire end, terminal and mast attachmentditto for the lower ends, turnbuckles, toggles and chainplatestaking careful note of the positions of the turnbuckles. The breaking strength of this line is now significantly reduced. I actually just replaced the outer turnbuckles. They weigh less and take up less room. SailboatOwners.com, 605 NW 53rd Avenue, Gainesville, FL, 32609 3. Your mainsheet probably sees more use than your spinnaker halyard.Our spinnaker halyards- on a boat that races frequently- are about 18 years old, and do not need replacing. How do you know when its time to re-rig? We only sell guaranteed-content, guaranteed-process wire, Herman says. Its imported and sold through distributors like Alps Wire Rope. Much depends on where it is manufactured; Herman and other riggers say the best wire today is coming from South Korea through a manufacturer called KOS, making wire to military specifications. It will be important to maintain a couple of parts, though: With a first boat, you most likely won't invest in new sails or the standing rigging if you don't have to. I won't go into detail, but I have written an in-depth article about the cost of new sails (opens in new tab). The two primary manufacturers of mechanical fittings presently are Sta-Lok and Petersen Stainless, which produces Hi-MOD. Usually the owner's manual gives you the specifications of all the running and standing rigging. Included are halyards, main sheet, headsail sheets, and topping lift. Before you contemplate the task of renewing your standing rigging you need to thoroughly inspect all components at close quarters to find out exactly what needs to be replaced and what items can be safely transferred to the new rig. FWIW, I just replaced all my running rigging on my 30' with 3/8" Sta-Set for thr halyards and 3/8" XLE for topping lift and downhaul, the halyard were wire-rope but now all rope. Marlow Ropes in the UK produce Marlowbraid. Although anyone can walk into a local chandlery and buy wire, that doesnt mean the wire is of the highest quality. Your subscription could not be saved. They can also crack under the constant tension, particularly if the rig has been pumping in rough seas or if the toggles that ensure proper shroud alignment have seized and cant move freely. There are multiple combinations and variations: For instance, if your mast has double tangs, most likely the end fitting will be an eye although it can be a marine eye or an aircraft eye, which differ primarily in shape. Gas engine will last a lot less long than diesels. I found some tests that some SBO folks had done many years ago on the O'Day 25's standing rigging. There are so many variables in the system types of end fittings, types of masts, types of attachment points that each boat will have its own specific requirements that can affect cost. A prudent sailor should inspect his or her standing rig at least once each season and should know when the time comes to replace most or all of it. It wears with time due to UV exposure, flogging, strain from the wind, and regular use. How exactly do you determine how much line you need for a given size sailboat? Three strand is referable and less expensive than braid for dock and anchor lines also a lot easier to splice. You will most likely also need (or want) to replace toggles and cotter pins, even if you keep the turnbuckles. Why do you want to suddenly replace all your running rigging? Connect the halyard to the head of the sail, here we are looping the halyard back over its plastic stopper to lock it in place. Theres no real way of measuring that. I would think at the first notice of a few broken strands in more than two of the wires. The November 1969 Modern Boating magazine . These products sell from $1.00 to $2.50 per foot. The next area deserving close scrutiny is the spreaders. Their solidworks simulations revealed the rigging was on the lighter side. Depending on the spreader joint, cap shrouds can sometimes prove troublesome as well, often requiring the spreaders to be disconnected at their roots. Let's start by getting a good overview of the different maintenance costs. If you're on a budget, you can maintain your boat reasonably well for just $1,000 / year. For my 41 feet sloop, I did most of the installation myself and paid approximately $4700 for the entire rig replacement. That cost me $10k. To save you from surprises, here's a full overview of costs you can expect when owning a sailboat. Riggers say the question of whether to rig with wire or rod is usually fairly easily answered: Run what you brung. About us For those with external halyard blocks, check to make sure all lines run freely and that block bearings arent worn.