Rigging, rope and deck hardware.

Standing rigging

BoatUS says most production sailboats use 1x19 stainless steel wire for the stays and shrouds, with rod rigging less common. It explains why grade matters: types 316 and 316L contain added nickel and molybdenum that resist corrosion better than 304, and the low-carbon 316L does better near welds.

Stainless depends on a thin chromium oxide film that renews itself only when oxygen reaches it. That is why BoatUS calls it most vulnerable where oxygen is shut out, such as a chainplate passing through a wet, cored deck. It names terminal fittings as the most common failure point and chainplates as highly prone to fatigue and corrosion.

Inspection and service life, per BoatUS

• Inspect standing rigging at least once a year. Cracks around swaged fittings are serious, and horizontal fatigue cracks are worse than vertical ones.
• Turnbuckles should have at least half to two-thirds of their threads engaged.
• Do not paint chainplates, because paint hides corrosion. Pull them for inspection about every 10 years.
• Wire rigging has a generally accepted service life of about 10 years, and BoatUS recommends replacing headstays older than that.

BoatUS also reports that titanium chainplates can be up to 60% lighter than stainless and resist saltwater corrosion. For a full check aloft, see the rigging survey described under buying a boat.

Synthetic standing rigging

Yachting World says swapping wire for Dyneema (a high-modulus polyethylene, or HMPE) typically saves about 80% of the weight aloft. The trade-offs it lists:

• Creep. Dyneema stretches slowly and permanently under constant load, so it is heavily oversized: an 8 mm wire stay typically becomes a 12 to 13 mm HMPE stay. Only heat-set HMPE is suitable for structural stays.
• Chafe and heat. It does not corrode, but sharp edges damage it and it melts at about 100°C, so it needs chafe protection.
• Inspection. Internal abrasion is hard to see, while wire is easy to inspect.
• Splicing. HMPE rigging needs expert splicing.

Cruising World describes Colligo Dux as a pre-stretched, heat-treated Dyneema with almost no creep, made for standing rigging.

Running rigging: rope fibres

Cruising World's guide to rope gives the main fibres:

Double braid, a core inside a braided cover, is the usual construction for halyards and sheets. Single braid is softer and does not kink, but snags more and has no protective cover. Cruising World recommends low-stretch, Dyneema-cored halyards, especially for furling sails that stay hoisted, and warns that thinner high-tech line may slip in winches and clutches sized for thicker rope.

The rope maker Marlow makes a similar case. It claims a Dyneema core stretches about 3.5% against about 12% for polyester, and that on a 10 m mast at half load a polyester halyard stretches about 6 cm against about 1.75 cm for Dyneema. Marlow suggests polyester double braid for cruising boats with Dacron sails, Dyneema cores for racing, and halyards as the first lines to upgrade, since a stretchy halyard folds the sail.

Winches

West Marine's winch guide gives the power ratio of a winch as handle length divided by drum radius, times the gear ratio. Its example: a 10 in handle on a 5 in diameter drum with 6:1 gearing gives 24:1 before friction. Other points from the same guide:

• Winches come in one to four speeds. On a basic two-speed the jump between gears is large, which geared two-speeds narrow.
• Self-tailing winches grip the line on their own. West Marine recommends them for most uses and calls them essential when sailing shorthanded.
• Genoa sheet winches are usually the largest aboard. Size them from the manufacturer's charts by sail area.
• 10 in handles are standard, 8 in handles are quicker for light-air trimming, and locking handles are recommended offshore.
• Strip, clean and grease winches with winch grease (not oil) at least once a year and check the pawls and springs. A broken pawl can let the drum spin back under load.

Blocks

Jimmy Green's rigging guide sorts blocks by bearing type. Plain bearings turn on an axle or bush, handle high static loads and need little maintenance, but have more friction. Ball bearings have very low friction and suit dinghy sheets and constant fine-tuning, but can deform under heavy force. Roller bearings carry more load with low friction, for runners, mainsheets and spinnaker halyards. Yacht adds that roller bearings are typical on mainsheets of yachts over 35 ft.

Yacht gives two sizing principles. Braided rope is commonly matched to a sheave about eight times its diameter (a 10 mm sheet on an 80 mm sheave), and smaller sheaves add friction and wear. The load on a block also depends on how far the line turns: about 1.41 times the line tension at 90 degrees and twice the tension at 180 degrees.

Headsail furlers

Practical Sailor, in a 2009 article updated in 2020, describes a furler as an extruded foil slid over the existing headstay, a drum at the bottom turned by a furling line, and a swivel at the top worked by the halyard. The headstay still carries the rig load. Bearings may be open stainless balls that need cleaning and lubrication, polymers such as Torlon or Delrin that can suffer UV damage, or sealed units that still need checking.

Practical Sailor lists the common problems as halyard wrap, foil sections separating and corroded or seized bearings, and links fatigued bearings in older designs to dismastings. It also found that poor furling-line leads, slack rigging and over-tight halyards all hurt performance. Its 2009 test of seven furlers for 30 to 35 ft boats found all of them reliable in 5 to 20 knots; that is a historical result, and the models may have changed since. BoatUS recommends taking a furler fully apart at least every 10 years.