[April]

Ok, I am new here so please bear with me. I am in process of restoration of a 1934 Sparkman Stephens Ketch, plan # 28. It was commissioned for R S Kellogg. I am the 4th owner. I have the plans. Suffice to say that everything had to come off the boat, paint, varnish, masts, etc etc... now I am ready to put it all back on. Time to act on rigging.

The boat has 24 soft eye spliced 1 x 19 316 SS wire which is serviced and purchased. The plans also show this as what is intended for this vessel. Now just getting those eye splices would be "interesting" but you see the rig uses cheeks and loops and stacking to fix the multiple rig onto the mast. This requires that the stainless be serviced and purchased. Rust was an issue, as we would expect from all that covering on the wire. I must keep with the original rig as this was a special set up for a couple to cruise with no other help, hence there are many small sails with multiple lines. Truly it is beautiful when it is on the boat but in a pile on the ground it is daunting.

I thought I could use Dynex dux for my large soft eye splices but the bury is way too long and I would have to put a thimble or some other terminal so that I could then go to 1x19.

My next thought is the Prolite Cable. If I could just get all the large eye splices in cable with a terminal that could attach to the traditional rigging then I could cover the eye in leather and fit it to the mast.

Any advice? Can this cable be spliced or sweged into a terminal that could attach to wire rigging? There are enough lines on the masts that I can't imagine there will be a huge load on any one terminal.

John Franta of Colligo thought I would have to go all Dynex due to the needed bury lenght of a splice.. but the rest of the line is not simple. I have many blocks and running back stays and triatics on both masts the dynex Dux could not handle this with the current blocks etc. This boat has not been altered. I don't want to mess with the rig other than to protect the masts and come up with a better way to make those soft eyes.

Any thoughts????