You’ve come a long way, baby

Phil Smidmore reflects back on the early days of the sport when equipment was less evolved:

My early big boat sailing was on yachts with rope/wire halyards and sheets. Yachts then were heavy and slow and the sheets and halyards loaded up such that the wire became like a piano or guitar string.

To be hit by a flogging wire sheet was not fun, and pretty scary when viewed in hindsight. As the wire got older, it would develop burrs and try to wind up like a spring giving plenty of warning that its days were numbered.

During the 1983 America’s Cup, I was the mast man on Australia 2 and we were running Kevlar halyards and sheets. This was very new and highly experimental, and all the other 12 Metres were using wire.

After a number of unexpected breakages of what were new lines, we developed a system of counting tacks and sailing hours to ensure the various lines would be replaced before breaking. We also had some very radical Kevlar sails. What was not well understood then was that sun and salt were the two worst enemies of Kevlar.

Since 1983, I have worked as a yacht rigger seeing first hand this amazing rope evolution. A scientific evolution but not one without failure. Sun, salt, and constant changes in loads, all in bountiful supply when sailing, are the enemies of any “soft” materials.

Many of my customers are upset when I suggest halyard and sheet replacements, often saying “but I have not used it very often”. Correct, but they sit in sun and salt, and while they may look good, breakage is often not far away. To avoid the cost of a correct splice, many would use a knot which reduces the rope strength and hence life, greatly.

With ropes, sails, and standing rigging all now being lower stretch than the old materials, the design of the various sheaves and blocks along with the design of the yacht’s structure has also evolved. In the old days, the stretch in sails and rope – not to mention the movement in hulls – absorbed a lot of the loadings.

No doubt the evolution will continue, perhaps in a more scientific way, but failures will still occur as boundaries continue to be pushed.