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Jury rig - how to make one


ab1974

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Apart from a hole in the hull, the other issue that concerns me is a dropped rig. What is the best way to make a jury rig. Obviously the variations are endless but there must be some common themes.

 

Assume you have a keel stepped mast and it breaks a meter or so above beck level. You have a spinnaker pole on board. After you clear away the mess what do you do next (assuming crew are safe and boat isn't holed).

 

Starter for ten questions:

- What are the best items to clear the rig (ie bolt cutters, hacksaw or other - what would a rigger use?)

- What should you try to salvage to assist with the jury rig

- How to you raise the pole and fix it in place

- Any special items you should carry.

 

Thoughts??

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I'd salvage everything I could and then chuck in the Dyneema/Spectra line (Amsteel, Dynex, Ocean12, DynaRound, Dynamica and other assorted names) that I carry. Then just see what I could do with that pile.

 

I have some of that line aboard in my spares kit as it's hell strong and a wire replacement. Far easier to work with than wire and wire rope grips (clamps). It's also handy if you bust one stay as a nearly as good as thru to even better than wire, depending on situation.

 

As to what to do with all the bits is tricky as we don't know what bits you recovered and what are left...or knot.

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The ability to salvage the rig would also depend on the current sea state.

If you've just been rolled in a gale, getting rid of anything banging against the hull would be pretty urgent.

Not wrapping it all around the prop seems to be an issue as well.

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We lost the whole thing from the deck up, it was a deck stepped mast so didn’t make too much of a mess at the deck but did a bit of damage to the gunwhale/toerail area on the leeward side. in the sea state we were in (southern ocean) we had to cut the mast away ASAP as it had broken under the boat and the but was banging against the hull.

We still don’t know what caused it to break but it was one of 3 things, either the runner block broke, the windward chainplate ripped out (carbon) or the deck spreader snapped (rotating wing mast on an open 60) all of the above happened but we don’t know in which order they went in.

We managed to clear most of the rig away using a hammer and screwdriver/drift as a majority of the stays were hanging there loose, the stays were all PBO so the best thing to cut it with seemed to be a hacksaw with a very fine blade or a serrated knife. No rod or wire at all so I couldn’t tell you whats best for that.

We managed to save the boom as we knew we would need it for the 2000nm trip around cape horn to Ushuia in argentina (chille is a no go area as they have some funny rules and its hard to get the boat out of there).

So things to save, firstly save some decent rope Vectran is the best so if you can save your genoa halyard its best. If you get left with just polyester then you will have issues keeping ANY rig tenson with your jury ring and it will be hard work, specra and dynex creep alot so need re tensioning every day. Keep you small sails, staysails, storm jib, trysail if you have them up, they are way easier to fit onto a smaller rig. One or 2 spare battens are also good, we rolled these up in the foot of a sail and lashed around it to make a semi boom, worked a treat.

Raising the rig was a drama, it was a heavy bit of kit, open 60 booms are not small! We had no chainplate on one side so couldn’t attach an ‘inline’ stay so used padeyes just aft but this meant they had to be eased as the rig went vertical, it took us a few attempts to get it up and was very dangerous especially in the southern ocean in 30kts…… also worth noting that the motion on the boat is very awkward with no rig to dampen it down and also we lost most of the life lines so it was a pretty scary affair. You feel like such a uncoordinated goof as you have to adjust to a whole new motion (wasn’t helped by carbon splinters all thou our numb hands and not being able to feel your feet due to the cold!) so we ended up crawling everywhere.

Eventually we got the rig in place and secured it, we lead the stays back to the primary winches so we could keep it tight and stop the rig from moving around, this is actually very important as it loads up a lot if any stay(even leeward) goes loose then takes up again. Also its good to have 2 stays each side so you can tie one off to move the primary stay between winches or add extra chafe protection in high wear areas. You don’t want to get stuck with just one stay attached to the top as if/when it chafes you don’t want to send someone up the jury rig to attach another one!

Here are a couple of photos of the dismasting and the jury rig, we did 1870nm in 10days and with a top speed of 22kts!

n635380719_90643_2150.jpg

n635380719_90644_2468.jpg

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We lost the whole thing from the deck up, it was a deck stepped mast so didn’t make too much of a mess at the deck but did a bit of damage to the gunwhale/toerail area on the leeward side. in the sea state we were in (southern ocean) we had to cut the mast away ASAP as it had broken under the boat and the but was banging against the hull.

We still don’t know what caused it to break but it was one of 3 things, either the runner block broke, the windward chainplate ripped out (carbon) or the deck spreader snapped (rotating wing mast on an open 60) all of the above happened but we don’t know in which order they went in.

We managed to clear most of the rig away using a hammer and screwdriver/drift as a majority of the stays were hanging there loose, the stays were all PBO so the best thing to cut it with seemed to be a hacksaw with a very fine blade or a serrated knife. No rod or wire at all so I couldn’t tell you whats best for that.

We managed to save the boom as we knew we would need it for the 2000nm trip around cape horn to Ushuia in argentina (chille is a no go area as they have some funny rules and its hard to get the boat out of there).

So things to save, firstly save some decent rope Vectran is the best so if you can save your genoa halyard its best. If you get left with just polyester then you will have issues keeping ANY rig tenson with your jury ring and it will be hard work, specra and dynex creep alot so need re tensioning every day. Keep you small sails, staysails, storm jib, trysail if you have them up, they are way easier to fit onto a smaller rig. One or 2 spare battens are also good, we rolled these up in the foot of a sail and lashed around it to make a semi boom, worked a treat.

Raising the rig was a drama, it was a heavy bit of kit, open 60 booms are not small! We had no chainplate on one side so couldn’t attach an ‘inline’ stay so used padeyes just aft but this meant they had to be eased as the rig went vertical, it took us a few attempts to get it up and was very dangerous especially in the southern ocean in 30kts…… also worth noting that the motion on the boat is very awkward with no rig to dampen it down and also we lost most of the life lines so it was a pretty scary affair. You feel like such a uncoordinated goof as you have to adjust to a whole new motion (wasn’t helped by carbon splinters all thou our numb hands and not being able to feel your feet due to the cold!) so we ended up crawling everywhere.

Eventually we got the rig in place and secured it, we lead the stays back to the primary winches so we could keep it tight and stop the rig from moving around, this is actually very important as it loads up a lot if any stay(even leeward) goes loose then takes up again. Also its good to have 2 stays each side so you can tie one off to move the primary stay between winches or add extra chafe protection in high wear areas. You don’t want to get stuck with just one stay attached to the top as if/when it chafes you don’t want to send someone up the jury rig to attach another one!

Here are a couple of photos of the dismasting and the jury rig, we did 1870nm in 10days and with a top speed of 22kts!

n635380719_90643_2150.jpg

n635380719_90648_4001.jpg

n635380719_90647_3494.jpg

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A few more photos, you can see the sails that I made out of what we had left. We had a high roach main, jib and furling 'code hugo'

There were times that even this was too much sail

n635380719_90644_2468.jpg

n635380719_90653_5880.jpg

n635380719_90654_6212.jpg

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As an aside - how interesting they made the decison on where to go next based not on seamanship or good sense, but which country had the least "funny rules".

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They obviously got the boat into a level of sailability where they were confident of making the preferred port.

Delivery crew as well not husband and wife team.

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What about some tips on the mum and dad crew who are cruising. You've lost the mast. Have the boom and spinnaker pole. What are you going to do and how are you going to do it. Make up your own assumptions.

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Chille really has some crazy rule about disabled boats coming into the country, they cant leave untill they are fixed up with local resources. Something like that anyway, it is comon for boats to bypass chille. it really wasnt much further to ushuia anyway and they had better port facilitys and regular shipping and also a big salvage tug that towed us in from just in behind cape horn. we had to get a cradle made for the boat and everything in ushuia. Movistar came into port a day after us.

And yes the boat was pretty sea worthy.

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A big day for the archiving team. Jury rigs, holes in the hull, antifoul (again), regalvanising chain and the how to's/why's and wherefores of importing boats (again). That's not to mention "I can't get multihull insurance" (again).

 

All we need is sailing watches and re-sealing windows and that will complete the set. :thumbup:

 

If all of this stuff was made available via iPhone, do you think KM would buy one?

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Hi NZ(from mandurah WA - Australia),

 

I was sailing sidecar - the small harryproa - and near Albany some strange (to me) wave phenonenon of reflected sewlls off of the big boulder/cliff shorelinee made my freestanding mast sway enormously. It snapped. A mast build /design issue.

Anyhow I had no motor etc, so had to get the rest of the 50nm to Albany with what i had.

Of course i got the sails untied and puilled aboard first. Then the mast and boom. It just lay down across the beams and stuck out a long way fore and aft.

So with my boat i use a steel pole that joins together int two parts to use as a lifting pole when stepping the free standing mast.

This worked good for a jury mast.

I only realised later that i could raise the mainsail up by tying loops around the pole and pulling up with a halyard.

tHIS IS FAR BETTER THAN RUNNING DOWNWIND WITH ONLY A FORESAIL.

So i got the lowest reef point of mainsail, and because of the harryproa sheeting it was easirer without a jib.

 

Doug

.

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