The space under the mast crane is coveted, because the yacht's hibernation is only over when the rig is upright, and every owner wants to get it over with as quickly as possible. It hardly matters whether it's just the club mates pushing or the experienced professional crew of the winter storage operator pushing the pace. The crux of the matter is that once stress sets in, the likelihood of errors usually increases, which in turn can quickly lead to costly damage and further delays.
To find out how to deal with the stress and what you should pay particular attention to when setting the mast, we asked professional riggers. These include Ole Büssen from Anker-Yachting in Kappeln. The master metalworker and his team erect around 400 masts every spring. "We plan 30 minutes for putting into the water and rigging," explains Büssen. Thomas Klotz from the Laboe shipyard calculates in a similar way. His crew launches around 200 sailing yachts each season and calculates no more than ten minutes for rigging. It goes without saying that everything has to be just right at such a rate.
We have compiled the ten most important points for stress-free rigging - now available in the new issue 7 of YACHT.
Hauke Schmidt
Test & Technology editor
