[C320-list] New standing rigging

[Jeffrey Brown]

Hi everyone,
Thought I would share this with you. I have hull 78 so she’s about 25 years old. I’ve been putting off the replacement of the standing rigging for a long time, I’ve heard you never want to go beyond 20 years. I bit the bullet and did it. Had a rigger do it in the slip over a month period of time. While I was doing it I replaced the jib furling with a Hood Sea Furl 707. Also, removed all the chainplates and resealed them. All new hardware, turnbuckles, etc. The only hangup on the project was the spreaders have to be removed, which was a challenge as they didn’t easily come off, there’s some pins that hold it in and they were fused together to the spreader, different alloys or something like that. Total cost on the project was about $6000. Why I’m sharing this is I took some pictures of the rigging, cut it off to see how the cables looked inside. Although it was pretty rusty on the inside, sure still looked good. For those of you that know more about this than I do, perhaps the integrity of the cables have diminished, but I found myself wondering if it really needed to be replaced. Either way it’s a $6000 sunk cost, but wondering if any of our smarter members want to chime in on this topic. My boat has been in the southern California oceans from day one, so always around salt water and I figured it was due. 

Here’s a link to the pics of the cables when I cut it off and opened up the strands https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1pyxsZK57NTpUVN-GH7Np4dz8us5MoRPO?usp=sharing <https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1pyxsZK57NTpUVN-GH7Np4dz8us5MoRPO?usp=sharing>

Not really looking for anything, just wanted to share this with everyone.


Jeff Brown
"Out of the blue" Dana Point, CA
Catalina 320, Hull 78
(949) 350-5123
oceanblues at mac.com