Sailboat Hardware Rigging The Details!

Sailboat hardware rigging walks hand in hand with stainless steel. Magic Dragon sailboat is consider to be a cruising sloop. (Full masthead cruising sloop) Sloop rig...How many ways can you slice pie?...Well?, I sometimes feel lost too!

Sloop means sail in front, and sail in back.

Magic Dragon has one mast, one sail forward, one sail aft (back) of the mast.

Aft sail means: main sail

All righty then...

First we will talk about standing rigging... standing rigging holds the mast upright and in place perminantly.

Magic Dragons standing rigging cable is 1 x 19, 316 stainless steel. Which means the breaking strength would be 4000 pounds per cable.

Running rigging is used for putting up the sails on the mast and during sailing. We ordered the 316 stainless steel cable in 1 piece, we will do all the cutting to size. You can also order them precut, it will cost you a little more.

Stainless steel alloy is corrosion resistant, about 50 percent iron, 10 percent chromium. Chrominum slaps corrosion around and spits it out...it is corrosion resisant.

But it doen't stand by itself, bring on more nickel and two percent molybdenum to 304 stainless, it's now called, Type 316. It is the best corrosion resistance in the standard stainless steel. It resists pitting and corrosion from most chemicals, especially saltwater corrosion.

Do you feel like your head is going to explode yet?

Let's go deeper.

Chrominum forms an outside oxide layer on the stainless steel. We know about aluminum oxide and welding, the two do not mix if you want your weld to hold. But here it acts like a protective coating and you want to keep it.

This oxide coat can be harmed by scratches, water retaining cracks, impurities, galvanic corrosion, stress and corrosion fatigue cracking.

Sailboat hardware rigging, stainless steel wire has allot of stress on them, which results in stress-fatigue cracking. Every time the boat leans to another side it produces more stress on the rig. Once the the surface is damaged keep your eye out for rust, your evidence that corrosion has set in.

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