A New Rig for Julia, Parcelled and Served Dyneema

[J.Madison]

Let me introduce Julia, an Atkin designed Ingrid Ketch. She was built in 1960 somewhere up in Desolation Sound on a barge by a Norwegian fellow named Christiansen for his family. They cruised to Mexico and Hawaii on board. The boat was built very faithfully to the original design.

I am now in the final stages of building a new Dyneema rig. Information is a bit scarce online, so I will try to include some tutorials and how-to information.

This is how I found her, for sale on the Wooden Boat classifieds.



She had been out of the water for almost two decades, fully restored and in great condition.





We set to work on the remaining jobs before launch. Painting, adding an electrical system, and the biggest job- rigging.

[J.Madison]

Painting makes such a difference.


Cabin lights made a big difference as well. We used extra warm LED uplighting for low power draw and a very cozy light.



The boat had gorgeous spars that were built not long before it was laid up. The Sitka Spruce masts had been scraped free of paint and given 20+ coats of varnish in a labor of love. A new bowprit was made of BC Fir by the previous owner. The masts were exactly built to Atkin's specifications, a rare and surprising thing. Most Ingrids have reverted to a masthead configuration, many with alloy masts. The standing rigging however was lousy. It was a mix of 7x7 and 1x19 ss very poorly spliced and failing.



Because the rig is built with spliced loops resting on bolsters at the upper ends of all the rigging, I needed something that was splice-able. Because I did not have exact lengths for each piece of rigging, I needed to be able to make the lower ends in place. I practiced splicing some 1x19 and it was fairly miserable. I priced out STA-LOC terminals for the lower end, and they are not cheap. The more I worked my spreadsheet, the more I started to see that I could rig in heat-set Dyneema for the same price as stainless steel, it would be twice as strong and last twice as long. The weight savings is just bonus.

I worked up my sizes and had them reviewed by famed PNW rigger Brion Toss. (He also sold me the rope, and the book to make sense of it.) This is all of the rigging for a complex ketch. 700 ft of various sizes. I could lift the entire pile easily in 1 arm. This stuff literally floats on water, but is much stronger than steel. You are looking at heat-set Dyneema, STS-HSR by New England Ropes. This is their standard SK-78 rope that they heat set, which nearly doubles the cost but makes it suitable for standing rigging. Creep, stretch, and strength are all improved by the process.



Because this is a traditional boat, and for added protection of the masts I decided to leather the eyes. I also parcelled and served the entire rig. Dyneema has two enemies, UV degredation and chafe. Serving protects against both. UV resistance when left bare is 8-10 years. This is nearly as good as SS, but without UV exposure the life could be nearly infinite. There is no fatigue cracking or stress corrosion or any of the other things that affect a wire rig.

I used #60 tarred nylon seine twine for the service. I liked the stuff from Seattle Marine, it is branded with their own logo, and comes in 2lb rolls. That is the kind of store that has massive steel access hatches in stock in 3 different styles for the fishing fleet. The twine shown is only a fraction of what is required for the whole rig.



The serving mallet was made from a locust firewood log and some bent copper straps.

[PeterSibley]

I'll follow this with interest!

[Bernadette]

I'll follow this with interest!

yeah me too..I've yet to rig my own yacht so maybe this is a good alternative for me also.

[amish rob]

I'll follow this with interest!

This is EXACTLY how I'd like to rig the Blue Moon. All shippy looking and proper like.

I cannot wait to see the end results.

Thanks for the lovely thread, so far.

Peace,
Robert

[AJZimm]

Following with great interest.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[J.Madison]

The groove in the mallet is not a perfect half circle. The groove has a bit of lip left on the leading edge. You need the mallet to be able to hang on the rope by itself even without the twine wrapped around it. You don't want the groove too deep, or the twine passing over it will not put any force on the rope to keep everything together. I recommend a different diameter groove on each face of the mallet to match the ropes you are working with.



Determine the length of each shroud. After adding in the allowances for the loop diameters, splice bury, turnbuckle length, etc... I bought 10% extra length of each size, and then cut them off the coil at 8% extra. This was to make sure I didn't get to the last one and come up short.

The first step to making a piece of rigging is the cut out the leather. I used a hefty hide of Latigo, which can handle the outdoor environment. I found one in the stacks that was thick enough to be strong but thin enough I had a chance of working it. This half hide is far more than was needed, but the whole thing was $200 bucks and I'm sure the extra will come in handy forever.



The leather was cut out with rigging shears (useful for the Dyneema) and then scribed and punched. I used a 3/8" pattern. This shorty must have been from way up high on the mast.



After marking out the splice tail and eye diameter the eye is parcelled. Parcelling was done with 3Ms Temflex Friction tape. This is just cotton strip saturated with a solvent free rubber compound. The same thing is available elsewhere as well. I found a Rudder article from the 1930s advocating the use of this type of friction tape for parcelling, so its been around a while. I would not use anything with more traditional solvents as they may interact with the Dyneema. Besides, this friction tape is amazing. You'll love it.

The rope is tied between two heavy objects with icicle hitches and the leather lightly seized into place. I used the diamond stitch found in Brion Toss's The Rigger's Apprentice. I would have served under the leather, but my mast tracks were not high enough to allow clearance over that large of a diameter.

.

The stitch starts in the middle of the leather and works to one end and then back from the middle to the other end. This is the hardest part of the whole thing physically. A sail makers palm would have probably prevented some of my more exotic blisters. I used thin seine twine for the thread, I probably should have gone a size or two smaller. A good tip is to bevel the underside of the leather so it can pull up to itself more easily and appear closed. Getting the width right so it will stretch tight and close but not be too loose or open is part of the process.

[jsjpd1]

Beautiful boat there Mr. Madison! Congratulations and thanks for letting us follow along.

[J.Madison]

Splicing is dead easy. Apparently so easy that I don't have any photos of it. First mark out the taper length. I used 28 diameters. The bury is 80 D, make a mark 6 inches above that on the standing part and upset the braid to this point. The heat-set process makes the rope very stiff, and once you upset it into an accordion it will stay that way. Run the tail up the accordion and out at the mark. You want a nice long smooth taper that goes right to zero. Divide the taper into 11 sections (12 strand) and cut and remove one strand at each mark. I even trim the last strand at an angle so it goes to nothing smoothly. You can then milk the whole splice back into itself and the tail will disappear inside.

This description assumes you are serving. It will hold tenaciously at high loads, and the serving keeps it from flogging apart at low loads. If you go bare rope, you need to use a brummel locking splice or stitching for low load reliability.

Because you upset the ropes lay, it needs to be pre-loaded to reset everything. Accurate measurement is impossible otherwise. I used a big come-along winch between a tree and my truck. Blocking all four wheels just got me enough friction on dry ground. 7mm needs to be pre-loaded to 2000 lb, 10mm at 3000 lb.



The clever thing that you can barely see in the picture above is the rope between the piece of rigging and the winch. The tree end gets a large thimble to spread the load and a crane strap to the tree. Because the dyneema does not knot worth beans, it is slid up into a piece of soft amsteel just like a splice. I can go into the rope at any point, along for 3 ft and then pop it out and tension everything up. This infinitely adjustable link made it possible to do any piece without moving the truck.



Parcelling is next. We parcelled from bottom to top so it would shed water. Not that it probably matters, but tradition dictates. The parcelling and serving needs to run in opposite directions. One clockwise, the other counter clockwise.



The serving is started by hand until there is enough laid to rest the mallet on. I begin by wrapping several feet loosely around the rope. I then place a 1" tail along the run and start taking firm wraps around over that tail. Work all of the loops tight against each other and by the time you run out of loops you will be ready to start with the mallet. Thread it on as shown. Taking wraps around the handle will add friction and make the serving tighter. This is very easy to over-do. When serving by hand I used 1 wrap, when serving quickly by "flinging" the mallet around the rope I used no wraps, and it was still a bit too tight in places. The tar on the spool keeps it from feeding out too easily so there is lots of friction always.



Give the mallet a little flip and shake the rope just right to keep it spinning around. You can go very quickly using a whole lot of muscle, or you can go almost as quickly using very little effort by hitting the frequency just right. You will have lots of time to study resonant frequencies and wave theory. It seemed to work well to have about 700 lb of tension on the shroud while serving, maybe a little less when getting to the ends. This also assures that you are locking the lay of the rope into its fully set position. This will keep it from changing length during travel.

Now you're off and running. Toss estimates 20-30 ft per hour. That may be about right. Don't let that scare you. The serving was the quickest part of the whole thing. Leathering and splicing take the majority of the time, so why not use 1-2 more hours per shroud to have excellent and attractive protection. I generally could make 1 shroud start to finish each evening after work.

[Phil Y]

Wow! I dont understand some of that, but wow, thanks. Im storing that away for when I have to redo my rigging.

Looks like a lovely boat you found there too.

But werent you building the Maid?

[J.Madison]

The mallet spins around with a blur, leaving a perfectly consistent, even wrap. It takes about 1 ft of twine per inch of serving. My longest shrouds at over 50 ft could not be done with a single 2lb roll. You start doing math as you go, 8 rounds to the inch, 12 inches to the foot..... nearly 5000 revolutions for the long shrouds. The mallet must have nearly 50,000 revolutions on it at this point. Its breaking in nicely.



When I get to the end, I stopped and pulled out 2 fathoms of extra and cut it off. I then serve down each leg of the eye by hand.



The main serving is then brought up over the ends of each leg. This seizes the throat and prevents any side loading on the splice.



At this point the whole thing is as stiff as wire. Roll it up gently and label.

The boat was up in BC, so working on it required a 7 hr road trip each way. You can see the bolster on the mast that will support one of the rigging loops.





My parents came up to help several times. Here we are installing the mast tracks. They are bedded in goop, SB screws dipped in creosote/varnish mixture and driven in with the yankee screwdriver. The brace follows up for final setting.

[J.Madison]

The new mast step, a beautiful piece of old growth yellow cedar, is slightly different than the old step. I needed to change the angle on the bottom of the mast and clean up the tenon sides to the new angles. This was definitely a "measure 6 times then hold your breath and cut once" type of job.



The end was then treated with several coats of creosote/varnish and sealed in with pure varnish.



The jumper stay had to be finalized in place, happily before the masts went up. After splicing it was served on the spot. You can also see the two grommets that are for the jumper stay and spring stay. That is the shortest loop that can be made with 7mm line and still get full non-overlapping bury of each tail. The seizings look rather shipshape I think.



The first stay with tension.



The bobstay is the highest loaded stay on the boat. Rather than getting a single piece of large diameter dyneema, I decided to take a clue from the old sailing ships and use a large grommet for the bobstay. This reduces the load on each leg by half. I also decided to take a risk and make it just the right size with no turnbuckle.

Here it is being preloaded. The sharpie marks lining up mean that I had just the right amount of extra that when I tensioned it everything pulled up exact. That is an important point I forgot earlier, when tensioning the splice, the tail grabs first and actually pulls the eye into the splice making it smaller. I assumed it would do the opposite, pulling out of the splice slightly as it was loaded. I learned to leave the eye 1/4" large so that when loaded it all pulled down exact.

[J.Madison]

I made the bobstay nominally 1/16" shorter than our measured dimension, and it fit perfectly. We had to disconnect the bowsprit at the sampson posts to connect the bobstay and then push it down to put the pin in. Not having a turnbuckle saved weight, a failure point, and cost. I think it looks better too. The bowsprit side stays were tensioned with dyneema lashings instead of turnbuckles, which is a great way to do things.



The siezings on the bobstay grommet are put on very tightly and should keep the whole thing from failing if one half cuts through for any reason.

[Chris249]

Wow! I dont understand some of that

You're doing better than I am..... I don't understand any of it.

Great thread, though.

[gilberj]

Wow !!!!

[Bernadette]

what will you be doing at deck level…deadeyes and lanyards?

[gypsie]

What a beautiful boat!
That's fascinating rigging. What have you taped (parceled?) the rope with, under the serving?
Nice interior lighting too!

[skaraborgcraft]

I once spent the best part of a week trying to master an Admiralty Splice, in some chunky galv wire. I ca only say its "easy", when you know how......i went back to Flemmish eyes splices. It would appear anything more than 3-strand gives me a mental block.
It will be interesting to see how this pans out, the only other cruising boat i know of with dyneema rigging, had to occassionally re-tension, and if i recall had some dead-eyes made up, which did look a bit odd on a modern boat. The weight saving and sail carry power was noticable, apparently. Nice wee ship.

[mohsart]

I once spent the best part of a week trying to master an Admiralty Splice, in some chunky galv wire.

The same as Crane Splice? Much easier than Liverpool Splice to get to look good IMHO

/Mats

[sharpiefan]

Beautiful boat, beautiful work. The Spirit of Hervey Garrett Smith lives!

[sharpiefan]

You're doing better than I am..... I don't understand any of it.

Great thread, though.

Available from our host at the WoodenBoat Store -

The Marlinspike Sailor (LINK)



#include [std-disclaimer]

[Garret]

What a fantastic thread! Beautiful boat, great pics (you need to get out of the city ) & good descriptions. beautiful work too.

[Garret]

What a beautiful boat!
That's fascinating rigging. What have you taped (parceled?) the rope with, under the serving?
Nice interior lighting too!

From post #7:

After marking out the splice tail and eye diameter the eye is parcelled. Parcelling was done with 3Ms Temflex Friction tape. This is just cotton strip saturated with a solvent free rubber compound. The same thing is available elsewhere as well. I found a Rudder article from the 1930s advocating the use of this type of friction tape for parcelling, so its been around a while. I would not use anything with more traditional solvents as they may interact with the Dyneema. Besides, this friction tape is amazing. You'll love it.

[Sailor]

I love this. I plan to do something similar with my big boat build when I get to rigging her. Keep up the good work.

[J.Madison]

I'll pause on the rigging for just a moment and cover the launch events. We headed North in a full truck, inside and out.



The smoke from BC wildfires was thick.



Many last minute jobs were tackled, including rigging the anchors and all other gear. This is our spare, a very hefty fisherman from a Canadian foundry that was going out of business.



We started to wet down the bilge for the first time in two decades. Here is a sign of the things to come.



The job list was posted on the first morning and slowly got crossed off.



Boat and crew, ready for launch.

[J.Madison]

These fancy hydraulic trailers really mean business. It was able to self rescue several times, once when it sunk to the hilt in soft gravel under the boat, and again when it was high centered on the driveway with the truck spinning out. It can lift itself and the truck off the ground, not to mention a boat.





The masts were hauled on a flatbed behind the crane truck.





The masts were stepped with the crane. Because the rigging was not completed on the lower end, temporary rope shrouds were ran to the chainplates to keep everything vertical without having the crane on the clock during all the splicing of the lower ends.



Oops, there was a tangle. Better climb up freehand, don't make that mistake on the main mast.

[J.Madison]

Stepping the main mast. It was a nice snug fit in the mortise.



After an hour or two of quickly splicing some shrouds, it was time for launch. We wanted to be the last boat in on Friday, so we could sit all weekend with easy access to the lift in case of emergency.





And let the flood begin. The water immediately started to rise, it inundated the first pump and kept going. It hit the second pump and slowed some. The third pump as able to keep up. We had 3 12V pumps wired to the house battery and 2 110V AC pumps running off of shore power. We didn't end up needing them all, either the 12V or 110V could keep up with it on their own.



Rivers ran down the inside of the planking, pretty much everywhere.



This is the amount of water we were making constantly through the first day. It started to taper off after that. We were down to 1 garden hose full time after 3 days. The planking is all quarter sawn old growth that is sealed inside and out, so it was fairly slow to react. After a week it was down to 1 single bad seam, which I recaulked making us a tight boat. That adventure probably deserves its own thread.



Everyone I worked with was very professional and fairly affordable. The Canadian dollar helps there. Newcastle Marina in Nanaimo was excellent. They let me do my thing, didn't bother me, and two yard days plus a launch cost less than $200 CDN!

[Paul G.]

Awesome job!

[J.Madison]

Back to the rigging. This rig has a spring stay between the masts. The lower end of this had to be spliced in place. My wife climbed up the rigging to take care of it. The process was the same as all the other lower ends.

-Install shackles and turnbuckles
-Wrap shroud around a thimble on the turnbuckle
-Mark the center point of the thimble
-Add two inches to the length to account for how much the splice shrinks the line
-Center the eye about that mark and parcell with friction tape
-Serve the eye by hand
-Cut to length and mark tapebr /> -Upset braid and run the splice
-Tapebr /> -Milk the tail back into the splice
-Fit around the thimble
-Tension the turnbuckle

This is all much easier on deck than hanging from the rigging.



Do note that when cutting the shrouds to length that a few inches must be added. This is because the braid gets a larger diameter due to the splice, effectively shortening it. You get some of this shrinkage back when tension is applied, but not all of it. The unrecoverable shortening was experimentally found to be 2" for 7mm and about 2 3/8" for 9mm.

One of the advantages of serving the rig is that you can use oversized thimbles. This larger bend radius is kind to the dyneema and very strong for the loading. I used high quality hardware from Crosby throughout. The thimbles are extra heavy duty wire rope thimbles, and the shackles and turnbuckles came from them as well. This is all American made industrial equipment with quality galvanizing and all the load ratings and spec requirements you could hope for. Because they do not come from the yachty store they are much cheaper than anything with "marine" in the name. They will also give lots and lots of warning before they fail due to corrosion, unlike most marine turnbuckles. Mostly, they fit the boat and play nice with my galvanized chainplates and fasteners.

Here are some details of the lower end of the rigging.



I made sure that the turnbuckles were all the way extended so that I have lots of room to tension the rig. The turnbuckles are of the jaw-eye variety, with a shackle to make sure there is no side loading. This particular shroud/thimble combo is a bit snug with the serving, so it will not fully seat into the thimble until the first load is applied. Of course you can see that I stopped all of the serving far enough above the deck to complete the splicing. This will be parceled and served in place after splicing is complete. The bronze (brass?) sailmakers thimbles on the jib stay are because I decided to serve that stay. The jib hanks to these grommets with soft shackles and the grommets ride up and down over the serving. This is a bit of an experiment, I will report on how it works in practice.



The above image shows how the splice will suck the tail of the line up into the splice when loaded. Its easy enough to take off tension and open it up a bit more. Be careful though, you can only adjust one direction. You can't push more tail up into the splice.

After two days of splicing and flood-fighting we were ready to head south.

[MAGIC's Craig]

Good to see the Julia G afloat. I used to wonder how the lovely girl was going to get extricated from Bryan's yard, and am delighted to note that she made the move to Nanaimo so well. I chuckled with that photo of barefoot Bryan holding the electrical cord, looking a bit perplexed.
Your rigging thread is excellent and should serve (sorry!) to inspire others to give it a try. And it is nice to learn that once that garboard was reefed out and re-caulked, she is dry again.
If you do continue with your cruising plans, please give some thought to visiting Morro Bay (California's Central Coast - half way between Monterrey and Santa Barbara.) We would be happy to host you and provide wheels should you need to get supplies before you continue south.
Cheers,
Craig and Vicky Johnsen
Sooty Tern WEE BONNIE
ex MAGIC
ex VIXEN
ex TALOFA

[Garret]

Everyone I worked with was very professional and fairly affordable. The Canadian dollar helps there. Newcastle Marina in Nanaimo was excellent. They let me do my thing, didn't bother me, and two yard days plus a launch cost less than $200 CDN!

"fairly affordable"???? In an east coast yard you would've spent that much by the time the boat was halfway off the trailer. Lucky dog!

[J.Madison]

Good to see the Julia G afloat. I used to wonder how the lovely girl was going to get extricated from Bryan's yard, and am delighted to note that she made the move to Nanaimo so well. I chuckled with that photo of barefoot Bryan holding the electrical cord, looking a bit perplexed.
Your rigging thread is excellent and should serve (sorry!) to inspire others to give it a try. And it is nice to learn that once that garboard was reefed out and re-caulked, she is dry again.
If you do continue with your cruising plans, please give some thought to visiting Morro Bay (California's Central Coast - half way between Monterrey and Santa Barbara.) We would be happy to host you and provide wheels should you need to get supplies before you continue south.
Cheers,
Craig and Vicky Johnsen
Sooty Tern WEE BONNIE
ex MAGIC
ex VIXEN
ex TALOFA

Thanks! I am still trying to speak softly about heading farther south, but that would be the dream.

"fairly affordable"???? In an east coast yard you would've spent that much by the time the boat was halfway off the trailer. Lucky dog!

Seattle would have been brutal as well, but some things are better up north. I did catch them as they locked up at closing time to pay, so maybe I got away better than I should have.

[Phil Y]

I think you did well with that wife you got!

[Sailor]

A wife who goes aloft to splice eh?

[J.Madison]

I think you did well with that wife you got!

Yes, yes I did. She can splice and serve and helm in heavy seas. She also let me spend all of her money on an old wooden boat.

I'd say that I chose carefully, but really I just got lucky.