Tensioning standing rigging

[Jamie]

I don't know for sure, but I believe the old wire was galvanized wire rope - I'm guessing a fibre core and I'm pretty sure the new stuff has some kind of fibre core. The new rigging was made up for my friend as a favour, and not a lot of information came with it. Very nice, though, spliced and leathered top and bottom. The old wire was pretty rusted with lots of jaggers to catch on everything that came by.

The hull seems to be in good shape. She was out of the water and surveyed in the spring, but the ballast is internal so the surveyor couldn't see the inside low down. Based on what he could see, however, he thought she was okay. No rot found so far.

Nothing else has changed. The boat was bought earlier this year and we didn't try to sail with the old rigging as it was in such poor shape so I don't know how loose the lee shroud would have been then. I'm sure all the rigging was tighter then than now when at rest, but I don't know by how much.

I found a post by Ian McColgin about tensioning an old schooner's shrouds, saying to tighten the windward shroud while watching the lee side. We can try this for the shrouds but I'm still not sure how to equalize the stays.

(BTW Ian, thanks for your reply to my question back in January about running backstays.)

Jamie