All sailboat rigging is engineered, which is to say that, somewhere along the line, someone gave some thought to how much load was going to come where, and worked to make everything strong enough that things probably wouldn't break. This engineering might have been done to the fifteenth decimal place, using near-sentient computers to track vectors, moduli, moments, accelerated loads, and all the other variables we've managed to identify, quantify, and give Latinate names to. Or the engineering's most visible outward manifestation might have been the squint in the eyes of the semi-literate artisan who gauged all those variables from a somewhat less formalized data base. Neither approach would be a guarantor of success or failure, nor would any other approach, because intuition, memory, comparison, analysis, analogy, and all the other mental tools available to us are only tools, only ways to filter and massage and play with information. We get it right -- sometimes -- but that's a long way from saying that the process of engineering leads inevitably to structural satori. In the words of writer Henry Petroski, "to engineer is human"; we do our best, but the outcome is an expression of our own wonderfully, quirkily imperfect minds.

   In rigging, I believe the imperfection is amplified, because the general populace understands tension structures much less well than they understand buildings, engines, and plumbing. You get a lot more anomalous, off-the-chart weirdness in rigging than you get in other engineered forms, as people charge in, thinking "It's just some strings holding up a stick; how complex can it be?" I once had a client who wanted to make a really dangerous modification to his mast, making it taller without compensating for the changes in unsupported length or the decreased stay angles. I went through the numbers, but to no avail. "Brion", he finally said, "I'm a hydraulics engineer, I know what I'm doing". I was too stunned to speak for a minute. Obviously he saw rig design as an intrinsically simple exercise and hydraulics engineering as an intrinsically involved one, so that if you had mastered the latter you had somehow mastered the former.

   So riggers operate under a double design challenge: they must deal with an exquisitely elaborated, multi-variable, constantly evolving art; and they must fight the prevalent assumption that what they're doing is somewhat less mentally challenging than cleaning a swimming pool. If they're not up to those challenges, what you get is, as it turns out, a typical contemporary sailboat rig: wire too big or too small; weak and/or corrosion-prone terminals; weak and/or foul-led chainplates and tangs; frustratingly-led running rig of less-than-ideal construction; and all the other details, profound and incremental, that add up to decreased performance, safety, sailing ease, and appearance.

   The main reason we don't see more rig failures than we do is that, somewhere along the line, people in design and fabrication are taking things seriously, creating gear that is so strong, so appropriate, so right for the job, that it's hard to foul up completely. You might think of this as the social aspect of engineering; at any remotely advanced technological level, making things is a team effort. Every time I install a toggle on a rig, I take it on faith, backed up by experience, that the people who smelt the ore, formulated the alloy, formed the plate, set the specs on the bending machine, and made the clevis pins, all knew what they were doing. What is more, I have to believe that they cared about what they were doing, and will continue to do so, so that I can count on their work in the future, as well. I need to know this about every piece of gear I install, or all of my elaborate calculations, fussing, and opinions on what's right are reduced, at least, in their significance.

   I believe that all of us want to do things well, and only need to become acquainted with the rewards of doing things well -- satisfaction, better likelihood of reliable employment -- to be motivated into quality work. This urge to do well is so strong that, to paraphrase Mr. Petrovsi, you might say that to be human is to engineer.

Next Month: Tales from the Seven Seas

   Fair leads,

      Brion Toss