Standing Rigging - Part 2
In Standing Rigging - Part 1 (2.5 years ago!), I left the shrouds and forestay with big loops spliced in the top ends for the masthead, but I didn’t splice thimbles into the lower ends. Since I had changed the height of the mast I wanted to size the standing rigging with the mast in place. I thought an actual measurement would be better than trusting my trigonomery skills to modify the rigging sizes in the plans.
I attached the forestay and shrouds at the masthead and then stood the mast up with temporary lines. Then I could measure the standing rigging accurately.
When measuring I needed to take into account “construction creep”. The idea is that the process of splicing the upper loops temporarily shortened the length of the line (until it is stretched again). With this size line, I subtracted 2” for construction creep in the upper splice when I made the measurement at the bottom.
For example, I wanted the shrouds to measure 22’8” from splice to splice so I marked the bottom splice at 22’6”. After finishing the lower splice the shrouds measured 22’4.5” - so I had added another 1.5” in construction creep with the lower splice. When I stretched the lines out they ended up at 22’8”. There should be a little more creep over time but it will be minor compared to the 3.5” of construction creep that I already removed.
With the lower thimbles spliced into the standing rigging, I raised the mast again with temporary lines and added lanyards to attach the standing rigging to the boat.
For reference, here are the resources that I used for splicing: