Check your masthead sheaves - and all the others

[BillT]

I recently posted about a "free" DSII I picked up about a week ago.

Well, as we all know, there ain't no such thing as a "free" boat, and this is proving to be true once again.

I first paid for it with several hours of hard work on a very hot day, scrubbing and cleaning the filthy boat.

Now I'm going to be paying for it by buying a bunch of replacement hardware. Just yesterday, I ordered $250 worth of line to replace all the running rigging.

Also yesterday, I took a good look at the mast and all the hardware on it, and discovered that the masthead sheaves were completely shot:

cXoaNItd.jpg (170.49 KiB) Viewed 771 times

And several other sheaves have a similar appearance.

Fortunately, these little plastic sheaves are pretty cheap, if you buy just the sheaves themselves, rather than the entire masthead assembly. Just have to drill out the rivets holding them in.

[GreenLake]

Running rigging, but more so the sails, are "consumables" on a boat, but you know that. Like tires or brake pads on a car. They have a definite lifetime. As do, incidentally, the wire stays. Please inspect those carefully for hints of rust at the terminals and if they are not the 1/8" upgrades, that would be an upgrade to go for. The 3/32" originals were undersized.

I "replaced" the rivets on my masthead sheaves with stainless steel clevis pins of the same diameter. An easy fix and the pins don't require drilling out, should the new set of sheaves require replacement.

In terms of blocks (not sheaves): one upgrade I did on my boat was to use ratchet blocks for both main and jib sheets. I can now hold either (or both, when singlehanding) in my hand without the need to cleat them. That makes it much easier to respond to a sudden gust.

Just FYI (I really hate cleating sheets on a boat like this, except in the lightest of winds).