Rig Check
Ile Jeudi
Bob and Lin Griffiths
Tue 20 Nov 2012 23:39
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Tuesday 20 November 2012
Danilo and his assistant from the rigging company
'Nordest' arrived about 5 pm and set about preparing lines to haul up to the top
of the mast. They inspected every part of the rigging and sprayed some '3M
stuff' on all the terminals (important compression joints) to check for cracks
in the rigging set up. None were found and this was beyond the work we
expected to be done. We got them to concentrate on the stailess steel
wires themselves to get an opinion about whether the rusting we experienced last
year was 'fatal'. The wires all passed inspection. Given that
Nordest could have got a full re-rig job paid out of warranty if they
had failed the rigging we felt suitably reassured.
They then went on to check the tension of the
various stays - too slack and the whole lot comes down (lots of Kg crashing to
the deck and many £000's of mast, boom and wires in a heap) - too
tight and the hull of the boat can be distorted. The boats are of made of
glassfibre and flex under load and are bent by the rigging
tension. If this is overdone the hull can bend so much that the
rig goes slack and comes down. So both too slack and too tight can
have dramatic consequences. I had been concerned that the tension was
too high but was told that it was at the lower end of the acceptable
tension range. Overall, the rigging and the way it was set up and tuned by
Demir Marine in Turkey was highly complimented (it must be said that not all the
work done by the Turkish marine industry receives accolades). The happy
hours spent up in the rigging with stainless steel cleaner earlier this year in
Portimao seem to have paid off.
We were so happy with the attitude and
professionalism shown by the Nordest people (even before they gave us the answer
we wanted to hear about the rigging) that we gave them a couple of other
jobs. What was most pleasing was that they responded promptly to
quotation requests and came on the days they said they would (even if the
times were variable) and did all work quietly and efficiently - and the prices
were good by European standards (helped by there being no VAT in the
Canaries). We were also impressed by Tecklenborg, the wire
supplier in Germany. They stood by their warranty and arranged the rigging
check with their Tenerife agent, even though the inspection was outside of the
12 month guarantee period and that there were reasons to believe that the
cause of the problem might lie with the way the Turkish company stored
the rigging wires and not with Tecklenborg themselves. This is the way
things should be but seldom are in the marine industry.
All in all a good result and we were happy to have
this crucial matter resolved after all this time.
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