Hello and rod rigging question.

[miatapaul]

Hello new here, and full of questions. I am considering the purchase of a 1979 C&C 36 for use strictly cruising and living aboard in the North East (New York Hudson Valley and possibly Long Island Sound) and of curse have worries about the original rod rigging. I really don't need the advantages of rod for racing, but of course any extra bit of performance comes in handy in an area of predominately light winds like I am in. Rod rigging replacement would cost about as much as the boat is worth, so this is a real concern. I have thought of replacing with stainless wire, but think it hurt the value when reselling and hurt performance. Then I read about Andy Schell and his Dynex Dux rigging on his cruising boat. I see a few appeals especially the DIY nature of potential repairs and initial work. It seems that it is starting to gain some traction in cruising vessels. I tend to be a bit conservative in my outlook, but the price of rod has me thinking it might be worth using.

What are the primary advantages and disadvantages? I won't be long distance cruising for some time and my not take this boat. It will be just coastal, with the most adventurous being a trip to Block Island or perhaps up the coast to Maine.

[Brion Toss]

Hello,
I will get to Spectra in a moment, but first, some other options. Staying with rod is the first, and though the rod is expensive, it might not require different tangs and/or spreader fittings, and anything else might, so the overall cost might even be less than for other options, plus performance will be very good. Worth looking into.
Next, compact strand performs nearly as well as rod, and you can either swage it or apply Hayn terminals or the like. You will probably need new tangs and spreader fittings.
1x19 is sort of an option, but one that would do significant harm to the performance of this boat -- too elastic.
As for Spectra, even with tang and spreader alterations it will be significantly cheaper than rod, and probably cheaper than compact strand. Performance will better even than rod, because of the reduced weight and comparable inelasticity. Colligo has rigged almost a thousand boats with this stuff so far, so it is well past the experimental stage, but the process is tricky enough that a DIY approach is not recommended without some training.
One thing I would recommend is to use New England's HSR instead of Dux; good prices, at least equal performance.
Fair leads,
Brion Toss

[miatapaul]

Thanks for your input. I am looking at a couple of boats. Seems a lot of people let the rigging sit for years without giving it a thought. I just think a 35 year old rigging no matter how good it looks is going to be a bit suspect. Especially since it was in salt water use. But the rod is really expensive and kind of makes one pause. As far as DIY I am thinking along the line of having the line spliced professionally, but doing most of the install work myself. I don't think I woudl want to try splicing rigging as my first splice project! Even with training. But I would want to learn how to splice it as it seems that it would be good to be able to do a repair if caught out there with an issue.