Replacing the Standing Rigging. P iii

 

Replacing the Standing Rigging. ( Part 3 )

( Here's the link to Part 1 )

Having fixed the issue with the Mast Mate, and had it tested by a sailing buddy that has a Catalina 36 - same spars as Eximius, I removed the mainsail slugs from the mast track and hoisted the Mast Mate. Then the weather decided to offer a challenge, it got cold - in the 40's and windy - in the 20+ knots in February 2026. I'm not going to commit to climbing the mast 16 times in those conditions. So leaving the Mast Mate setup on the mast, I took a those couple of weeks off waiting on a weather window. 

Good weather returned mid February - and with it I came down with the flu ! Argggg! That took me out of the picture for another two weeks. Now we were within our next sailing club event, it's a big one - the Change of Command Circle Raft Up February 28th 2026. So I pulled the Mast Mate back down and put the mainsail back up. We participated in the Circle Raft up - rotten weather, so no actual circle rafting but we still had a good time with sailing friends on Lake Boca.

Now Peggy was getting a bit antsy about preparing the boat for the Insurance Survey that needed to be completed before renewing our Marine Insurance early May, this Year!  So I bit the bullet and hired a company to do the standing rigging change out. It's going to cost around $3000 for the work. I do have all of the rigging, so this should speed things up.

So, yesterday, Thursday March 5th, I went down to the boat and removed the Genoa from the Furler and withdrew the Furling line from the Furler drum. I also removed the shoddy horizontal support brace that was connected to the lower end of the Back Stay above the Bimini that connects to the Radar Pole on the Port side of the Cockpit. Not sure how I'm going to replace that brace but it will not be Aluminum nor will it connect to the Standing riggings.   

Today I'm taking all of my standing rigging supplies from Catalina Direct. I'm not certain of the ETA of the Riggers on Monday but I'll be down there by 07:30 unless I hear from them to be there earlier.

While down at the boat I checked each piece of the new rigging just one more time. The only thing that is slightly different from the OEM rigging, is that the Original Back Stay has a single turnbuckle just above the split ( which is just above the Bimini ) and the new rigging has no turnbuckle above the split but has a turnbuckle on each leg of the split. So when the backstay is put together, the length of the Stay is fixed and each leg of the bridle are adjustable. Not that we'll ever need to adjust them.

I also checked that the Dock 11Ov Power supply was working - we never use it as we have our onboard supply that easily meets our requirements on the boat.

On Monday, I will take Gasoline to run our Honda eu2000i generator just in case shore power goes out.

I think we're ready. No pressure - right!