Hi, I have a 41 foot yacht and the rigging is 11 years old. I have had 3 quotes for replacing the rigging and they are all around the $9000 mark.
The cost of the wire and fittings is around $3500. Is it possible for me to replace 1 or 2 wires at a time. I would save a lot of money
Interested to know
Thanks
John
In short, yes, but it's alot of labour time and you will need someone there all the time to help.
The hardest is the forestay, especially if it has a furler.
You need a halyard or two to hold the mast fwd, a halyard to go up on and a halyard to lower/raise the furler with forestay.
All of these will need seperate winches, ideally with self tailers. The one to hold the msat up will need to be there for a while as it's not the quickest job to take the furler apart and put in a new forestay.
Before you start, remove the sail and take out one of the grub screws holding the sections of foil together. Go and buy 20 of these, 4 allen keys to suit (you will drop them), an oversize drill and tap (plus grub screws to suit the bigger size) just in case some are seized and won't come out. Oh and a tube of duralac to put it all back together.
Cheapest way is to hire a crane and drop the mast yourself. Then remove all wires (label them) and take to a rigging shop for them to make onsite. Depending on the number of wires they shouldn't charge you more than a couple of hundred bucks in labour. Then re-assemble and get crane to put back in.
This way you can also check all pins, welds etc, why the mast is out of the boat.
Yes it can be done, I use the main sheet setup with a new drum of rope I keep for this purpose. I use a new halyard to get the main sheet block to the top of the mast then use a bosons chair and haul myself up. I use a second halyard as my safety line which is kept tensioned by a friend . You do all the work all they have to do is keep tension on your safety line. I measure all the stays and take one off the mast for the fittings. Get new ones made and replace one at a time using supporting ropes where needed. Will be doing my mizzen mast in the next few weeks like this , did the main last year. I found if you can use a wharf to walk down when you take the furler off its not to hard. Saves lots of money and you get a great work out. Oh if your going to measure your stays make sure you do the measuring not your mate cause if you get it wrong there's no refund??
