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Old 12-07-2006
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catamount catamount is offline
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Yes, inspect the rigging, but DO NOT IGNORE THE MAST! Look for evidence of corrosion and/or fatigue or failure, such as Bubbling Paint and Hairline Cracks, particularly around fittings attached to the mast, near welds, gooseneck, vang, at the Partners where the mast passes through the deck, halyard exit boxes, spreader bases, etc... If you have internal wire halyards, they could be wearing away at the compression bars between your spreaders. To inspect that you either need to take your spreaders apart and pull those bars out, or maybe you need a fiber optic scope or televiewer.

Here's just one example:

Before:


After:


In this case, the cracked bit of mast (the bottom 10 feet) was cut off and a new 10-foot section spliced on in its place.

If you have any doubts about what you are seeing, or lack confidence in your ability to asses the condition of your spars and rigging, by all means hire a professional rigger to do a rig inspection survey.

Last edited by catamount; 05-02-2009 at 08:48 AM. Reason: update URLs
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