Rigg & gooseneck inspection was on the To Do List for today with particular attention to the mainsail halyard. A bit of a hassle to take the long vertical battens out of the mainsail being able to drop the sail on deck. Surprisingly the halyard for the main is not of wire/rope configuration, which I was not aware of.
After looking at the halyard itself, Clive and myself decided to keep the same as it does not show any reason for concerns. No clue why 20 years ago Hallberg-Rassy did the genoa sail and cutter sail halyards in a different way than the mainsail halyard. Today, it’s all Dyneema anyway.
On the rigg hardware itself, we replaced one split-pin at the forestay, which was bent and showed some signs of corrosion. It was also a bit undersized for the drilled hole. After taking the tension completely out of the forestay with the help of the spinnaker halyard fixed and tightened to the bowsprit, we could turn and move the bold, get the old pin out, clean the area and get a perfectly fitting new split-pin attached.
Last but not least, there was a lot of rattling noise coming from the gooseneck area on our trip back from Azores. One reason is that we mainly sailed on a broad reach course, which is proned to more movements of the boom, but second reason is some play in the gooseneck connection.
We will now limit the play by adding some customised shims, done by Wes and his team mate Dave. This rattling can drive you mad at sea and I hope it will be gone afterwards or at least reduced to a bare minimum.
Overall these are small items to improve and keep the rigg in safe and mint conditions.
Fair winds…
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