rust on one wire

[Douglas]

I re-rigged my boat in 1996 with Loos 316 SS 1/4" 1 X 19, purchased from West Marine.

After my maiden voyage from Hanalei Bay to Port Townsend, one exterior strand in the 1 X 19 cable turned brown with surface rust color, but not yet flaking.

I removed one stay at a time and treated each foot of the cable with SS Pickling Paste then neutralized it, then fresh water rinced the cable throughly.

As Brion says, I deduced that the one strand in the cable was contaminated with iron from the die it was pulled through, and as it was pulled through the lead scrubbers, that strand was not cleaned well.

Larry Pardey told me there was a wire company in the UK that uses jewels as scrubbers, but I didn't get the company name, nor why jewels would be better scrubbers then lead.

So , I re-installed all those Loos stays and used them without any further rust showing on the outside , from 1999 to 2005 on a cruising voyage to Thailand.

Now in 2011 I had a chance to un-ravel some of that old cable and found slight rusting and pitting on the center strands, that cable always looked bright and new on the outside, which gave me a shock .

Good surveyors recommend replacing all structural SS every 10 years, especially if the boat is used in the tropics, and I couldn't agree more with that rule of thumb.

Douglas , S/V Calliste, Singapore