The Rigger

On Monday we had a visit from the sail rigger on the island.  Around marinas and boatyards, a rigger is one of the specialist workers that handles the lines and stays holding up the mast and controlling the sails.  An important consideration, and one that we tend to take for granted, is how the mast stays up.  I do spend time with the fittings down on deck, the toggle bolts and the braided wire that I can reach from the deck, when I go around with my stainless steel polish.  But the rest of the rig - up to the top of the mast - is only looked at infrequently.  Before a major sailing expedition like we are planning, the rig is one of the systems we wanted to have inspected by an expert.

The rigger has his own mountain-climbing ascension gear that he attaches to our mainsail halyard to go up the mast.  He uses a hefty harness that he steps into, that makes kind of a seat when he leans back on it.  I am sure he appreciates the steps we had installed up the mast, also.  He inspects mid-way, at the spreaders, and then all the way at the top.  Each fitting and the wires on the way up are carefully examined, by touch, sight, and with a magnifier that looks like jeweler's loupe.

Up at the top (about 50 feet from the water line)

Mid-way at the spreaders

At the top

The good news is that most of the rig looks serviceable.  He did recommend that we replace two of the stays and one of the turnbuckles.  Compared with replacing all of it, almost a dozen wires, fixed and running, we were happy to hear of only two compromised stays.  If one of these stays were to fail at sea, the results could be disastrous.  It could mean that the boat would sink, almost certainly that the mast would come crashing down on deck and into the water.  From the accounts that I have read, a stay failing under sail (when all of the rig is under more tension than at the dock), it sounds like a gunshot.  If we were alert, we could change course, use spare halyards to shore up the mast, and other measures, but it would be a true emergency under way, and one that we want to avoid.