Replacing Standing Rigging - Prep the boat

Preparing the boat for replacing the Standing Rigging.

Let's clarify the names of the Standing rigging parts.

First the Wires:

• Shrouds: Wires running from the mast to the sides of the boat, preventing lateral (side-to-side) movement.
• Stays: Wires supporting the mast in the fore-and-aft direction.
• Cap Shroud: Runs from the masthead to the chainplates for upper mast support, sometimes via the Spreaders.
• Lower Shrouds: Attached to the lower section of the mast to provide base support.

On our Catalina 34 Tall Rig, the lowers reach up to just below the Single pair of Spreaders and the Cap Shroud is held away from the mast by passing in a groove of the spreaders.

The method that we're going to use for climbing our mast involves a Mast Mate, ours is 50' long so it easily reaches our Mast Head with a few steps laying on the deck.

The Mast Mate has slugs that fit inside the sail track groove in the aft edge of the mast. It's pulled up to the mast head using the Main Halyard and then tensioned at the bottom to keep it taught. 

We needed a safety line running from the top of the mast down to the deck so that line was also secured to the main halyard.

To install the Mast Mate we first removed the sail slugs from the mast groove and moved the sail about a foot further aft from the mast to get it out of the way.

Next we had to ease the Lazy Jacks to prevent the Mast Mate catching them as it was pulled up the mast.

In the event of me being stuck up the mast ( incapacitated ) then Peggy would be able to lower me by easing the Main halyard on the winch in the cockpit.

With the Mast Mate and Safety lines rigged, next was to measure the tensions in the shrouds and stays. I used my Spinlock Gauge to do that and recorded the numbers in the RigSense app on my tablet.

The first shroud to be replaced is the Stbd Cap Shroud. In preparation for that, we used the Spinnaker Halyard to act as a temporary shroud. One end of the Halyard was attached to the Stbd Fwd Shroud turnbuckle, it then went up to the block at the front of the Mast and then back down to the Stbd Aft Shroud turnbuckle. Then to tension the line, we took a few turns of a spare line about 5' up from the deck and applied tension between the two ends of the line which gave us control of the tension of the temporary stay.

In this image, The Black line is the Spinnaker line secured at the lower ends at the Turnbuckles and the Red line is the tensioning line.

All of this prep took a few hours as we had to figure out which lines to use and how to tension the temporary stay.

We're all set for replacing the Stbd Cap Shroud - once the wind dies down!

The plan then is to ease the Stbd Cap Shroud Turnbuckle, then climb the mast, detach the top end of the Cap Shroud from the Tangs on the side of the mast just below the mast head, lower the shroud on a messenger line ( it would probably do damage if we just dropped it from the top of the mast. )  

With the shroud on the dock, we'll measure the new shroud and cut it to the correct length, make up the Hi-Mod connection for the turnbuckle end, then climb the mast and hoist the top of the shroud to the mast head and replace the fitting in the two tangs, insert and secure the cotter pin into the pair of tangs on the mast.

On the way down, stopping to remove the two forward shrouds, hoping to save climbing the mast unnecessarily. 

After replacing those three shrouds, we'll switch the temporary shroud to the port side and replace those 3 shrouds too.

At least, that's the plan. We'll see how it goes. It's definitely going to be hard work and we'll change it to do what we can when we can.

Wind is expected to be in the 20's most of this week. So hold tight till Wednesday/Thursday.

See you on the water.

Paul