Patrick wrote:
Nothing that junk owners ignore, of course, but the article fails to mention one other iimportant point, at least for me: the economical factor!
One of y friends who has a 30 feet catamaran has had to change his standing rigging. It costed im over 15000 €, nearly the price I paid for my 2 masted China Blue. And he has to do that every 10 years!
When I see the prices shipshandlers ask for any piece of shiny rigging "cuttlery", I forget the few degrees to winward I suppose I loose against the pointy rigs...
That sounds to be an exceptionally high price for standing rigging for a 30' catamaran, that would be $25000 NZ which would more than buy a whole rig here in New Zealand. so I don't think it should be indicative of a cost faced by owners of traditionally stayed masts, and standing rigging will generally last for decades. I am all for freestanding masts whether on a junk rig, or some type of bermudan rig because it does away with the whole risk of losing a rig because of the failure of just one small component.
But there are different ways of doing things now and any boat owner provided he has some little technical ability and is prepared to do some work can very easily make up standing rigging using composite materials, the most common being Dyneema. It is easy to learn the splices and there are now a whole range of end terminals available, some can be expensive when buying the big brands, but just common low friction rings can serve as the end terminal for a shroud or forestay. I did the Dyneema rigging on my own admittedly small 6m catamaran and the cost was exceptionally low. When I came out of the suppliers for the components I had spent less than half what I had expected to spend, and a bit of time spent on the internet was all I needed to learn the splices. I was surprised when sailing with a friend recently on his 13 meter catamaran that even the forestay was Dyneema and using simple plastic hanks on the jib. I also spent some time recently working with a rigger from our Americas Cup Team New Zealand and I learned some trade secrets about how the rigging is done on these high tech yachts, and once again it is very simple.
Junk rigs are great, which is what this association is all about, but for the average boat owner engineering a free standing mast for any yacht can be a difficult undertaking, but with the advent of composite materials there are other ways of doing things which can produce costs savings over more traditional methods and technology.