Gooey STS-HSR and dyneema standing rigging on an Aphrodite 101

[jarred]

Finished rigging my Aphrodite 101 with 7mm STS-HSR. Couple of photos below. Made two purchases of the STS-HSR from West Marine. The first was on close-out. This batch was stiff and smooth, everything you would expect. Second purchase was gooey. Clearly a coating had been applied and maybe never set. When milking the splices the coating would come off in little gooey balls. Anyone have a better experience with this stuff?

I contacted NE Ropes about the coating, they responded saying they'd chase down the gooey spool from West Marine and send me some replacement "ASAP"... that was a little over 1 month ago. The contact won't call me back or respond to email. I think maybe I won't buy this product again.

Anyway, some thoughts on the rigging. Splicing dyneema standing rigging is definitely fussy. There's the constructional stretch in the splices which I measured by splicing up a short line and tensioning to 2000 lbs. But there also seems to be constructional stretch in the line, maybe from handling. The longer runs stretched more and I wound up re-splicing them during my pre-stretch session. The pre-stretch was done by bringing a chain around the Thomas G. Thompson's mooring cleat (UW's research vessel) and attaching the other end to a big truck via a come-a-long. I rented a tension dynomometer to measure the tension in the line. The crappy little harbor freight come-a-long was only good for 2000 lbs. and my truck started slipping so had to put it in 4WD. I was shooting for 3k lbs.

The dyneema is an interesting conversation piece at the dock, but on a rig this small and simple I think the stretch vs. weight vs. windage war would be won by the 5mm rod that was originally on the boat. To that end, I ordered a new 5 mm rod headstay from BSI, dyneema and hanks not getting along. The 5mm rod actually turned out to be cheaper than 7mm dyneema. So it goes.

Few things for anyone interested. I cnc machined my "terminators" (Coligo term) from Ultem 1000 which is a plastic about 1.5x stronger than delrin (acetal) and has no UV susceptibility. FEA modeling was done in Solidworks. The shrouds were turned at the spreaders by a heavy duty shackle cut in half and tig welded to the spreader tips, seized on with 316 welding rod. #6 Alexander Roberts t-bar ring fitting were used up top. The rig has now been through two 35 knot blows with no issues.

[Brion Toss]

Hello,
It is Saturday as I write this, and New England Ropes is closed, but I am going to go out on a limb here and say that they are going to make this right. My experience with them is that they are obsessively obliging about customer service. I don't know who you've been dealing with, but I'm going to assume some foulup, not ill intent. I'll report back after calling them on Monday.
Regarding your other points, yes, of course there is constructional set in HSR, as there is in every rope (and wire, for that matter), and it requires the sort of arduous fussiness you describe to deal with. That's just the nature of the beast, though you might want to invest in a beefier come-along...
The HSR weighs less than a quarter of what the rod weighs, which can be significant, of course, and hank wear can be eliminated by a variety of means (I'll get some pictures up here soon).
That leaves price. Did you include the cost of rod heading in your figures? Even if the HSR is costlier, the cost/benefit might make it worth it.
We still rig boats with both materials, as well as wire. They are different tools, each with advantages and disadvantages.
Fair leads,
Brion

[jarred]

Hi Brian. I wasn't trying to bad mouth either New England Ropes or the use of dyneema as standing rigging. I had not had any experience with STS and my original question for NER was whether the gooey coating was correct for the product or not; the two samples I ordered were very different. They then offered to replace the gooey stuff. I followed up by providing details regarding the West Marine order so the rep could track down the spool, didn't hear anything, sent follow up email, nothing, called left message, nothing. So maybe this rep has left the company, who knows, could be anything. My question for this forum before pursuing it any further is whether the gooey-ness is correct or not.

I offer my "fussy" experience for the DIYer considering dyneema. If I had to do it again it would be much easier. You obviously have the process down so it's a different story. I'll be keeping the dyneeema shrouds and would do it it again. The forestay has the predicted longer term wear issue, but also standard sized hanks were hanging up on the splice at the turnbuckle. This could also be addressed, but if one already has an inventory of sails then it gets to being a lot of addressing. There's ~3 lbs. of difference between rod and dyneema forestays on this particular rig and I decided I'm okay with that trade-off.

[Brion Toss]

Hi,
As expected, the good folks at New England Ropes are all over this one. My guy Kevin Coughlin wrote: "...the cause of the “stickiness” is a formulation error. Perhaps the operator had settings dialed for larger rope, and did not change. In the end, no loss or degradation in performance, but not our best effort."
Jarred, they are awaiting an address to ship you some fresh rope, at a high rate of travel. Contact: Kevin.Coughlin@teufelberger.com.
Fair leads,
Brion Toss