installing new rod rigging

[infinitysail]

It's time for me to change the rod on our 40 ft sailboat. The difficulty is that we are in Central America, where there are no places that do rod or really any riggers that I trust.

I have a quote from a company in the USA that says they can make the stays and ship them down to me. They will put new k200 tangs on the stays, since they are captive. I will measure the lengths and spreader bend locations and angles for them.

I plan on installing the new stays with the rig up. It is keel stepped, so I think this is reasonable using some lines as temporary stays. Obviously, you do one at a time. As I understand it, I just need to use a blowtorch to melt the loctite, remove the old tang and put the new tang in with some new loctite and fasteners.

The new forestay will be wire, as I don't want to disasssemble my furler foil (Harken MK1 unit 2). I will drop it and run the new wire on the dock, using a norseman stud at the bottom. The rod locking collar from the old forestay should work with the norseman fitting, I believe. It looks to be a 5/8 stud.

Does this sound crazy, or does it sound within reason? Are the any other considerations I am overlooking?

Thanks for the advice.

[Joe Henderson]

Dear Infinitysail,

First of all, why is it time to change your rods? Do you really need to do it now, and in such a place!

Second, changing oldish rods is an intricate job, not to be undertaken lightly, especialy with the mast up.

If the time has really come, then you should probably take the mast out and do the job thoroughly, there may be hidden horrors to discover!

And, if you remove the mast, you can send the whole set of rods, complete with tangs etc to be sorted in the States. Whoever does it can re-use tangs and/or turnbuckles where appropriate, and you will probably get a better and more accurate job.

Regards,

Joe.

[infinitysail]

The rigging is 23 yrs old and shows a little rust at the bottom terminals. I think it is time to change it. I want to take the boat back to the US, but I am nervous about doing it on the original rigging.

I would agree that it would be nice to remove the mast and send the rigging back to the states to get it more accurately replaced. That would cost me about $2k or more here, which makes me want to try to do it in place. Reusing tangs or turnbuckles will not save me much, either. It seems to me that removing and putting in new K200 tangs is a pretty easy job, but I just wanted to be sure.

One followup question: Navtec sells a C550 rod turnbuckle and the N690 rod turnbuckle for half the price. Is there any reason to go with the C550 for ~$600 more on the job?

[Joe Henderson]

Mate,

Yes it's time!

Good luck with the change over. Temporary stays and halyards out to strong points on the sheer will suffice if you really don't want to take the mast out.

Make sure you ask a LOT of questions on here as you go along. Someone will always have the answer.

Do you have discontinuous rods or tip cups?

I would go with the N690s, much cheaper.

Joe.

[infinitysail]

Thanks for the quick responses, Joe.

Rod is all continuous with spreader bends. I measured from the middle of the bend to the bearing surface of the stemball adapter cup inside the k200 tangs. I also measured overall length. I finally measured the bend angle with a t square and some rusty high school math. I will probably remeasure one more time on the other side of the rig to double check everything.

One more question: Navtec has aluminum and stainless spreader bends. Are the stainless ones significantly better?

Thanks,
Frank

[Joe Henderson]

Frank,

The stainless bends are not significantly better. It's just that the alloy ones are cheaper and lighter.

I would go with stainless bends and get the rigger to just leave them loose on the rod, then you can bend them inplace and match the old rods and get the pre-existing rod curve in the right plane.


Joe.