Saltwater woe’s,

Every year I go up the rig and inspect the wires that hold up the mast. I not only check the wires but more importantly the end fittings. Well, this year I found a bit of trouble, 5 of the end fittings on my standing rigging were cracked.This is a "bad" thing for if the end fittings fail the wires that hold the mast up can come loose and the mast falls down when under high stress, like, Oh say, in a storm! Salt water gets onto the wires and wicks it’s way down into the end fittings. Once there the salt begins to rust the “stainless steel”. When steel rusts, it grows in size and with no where to go, it’s like water freezeing in a glass jar, (only this is a stainless steel fitting) and it cracks the fitting. 

crack at the bottom by the wire
 

One of the cracked end fittings was on a jumper strut wire (up on the top of the main mast), two were on the end fittings that hold the main mast up and two more were part of the rigging for our second mast, the mizzen mast. I started on the main mast by climbing up and unhooking the bad wire, taking it down, replacing the end and reinstalling it. Sounds easy until you have to undo cotter pins, knock out clevis pins, unscrew the tips of the spreaders (to release the wires) all while hanging from a bosons chair 50ft+ above the deck in a wind.

Next it was the Mizzen and the main standing rigging. Here’s a pictorial of what it takes to replace a 3/16^th end fitting with a “stayloc” brand wire fitting.

I use these large cable cutters which are NOT chain cutters

cable cutters "shear" cut so you get a clean cut wire

cut the wire close to the bad fitting

excellent clean cut

old on left, new Stay Lock on right

put the tappered plug over the inner wire and slide it down into the outter wires

Now, bend the very end of the outter wires to follow the bevel of the inner tappered plug

Now, put some silicon calk into the wires to keep that rotten salt water out

slid the end on and

screw it together

finally, tighten the two down really tight

Here are the five ends that I cut off showing the cracks on each one!