Ball & socket shround attachments

[conachair]

I'm slowly preparing my Ebbtide 33 for long distance cruising. At the moment the shrouds terminate at the mast into a swaged ball which fits into a socket in the mast. Now, these don't look up to the job to my eye, is there any data suggesting that tangs bolted through the mast would be stronger? I'll be replacing all the rigging anyway (possibly dyform and stalok or norseman terminals), presumably it's not too major a job to replace the ball & sockets with the mast down, anything I sould look out for if I go this route.

Many thanks

Paddy

[Brion Toss]

Hello,
The configuration you describe is fine, so long as the castings that form the sockets are fine. And they usually are. We have found big voids, and even cracks here, so take a close look; quality varies. If things look bad, then you have good excuse to bypass those castings and installing tangs a bit below. Either system should be maximally efficient, done right. The advantage of the castings is a simpler fabrication. The advantage of conventional tangs is inspectable/replaceable/ separate spreader and shroud loads utility.
Oh, and if you do bypass the castings, they will almost certainly still be strong enough to handle the relatively trivial spreader loads, unless, say, there are cracks along the welds or chunks of metal falling off.
Further oh: Hayn will be coming out with a stemball version of their excellent terminal soon, so you won't be tied into using swages up there.
Fair leads,
Brion Toss