Page 195 - The Complete Rigger’s Apprentice

Another effect is lowered cost. Gear for racing not scantling failure. That is, while a racing mast
rigging is ruinously expensive, with the price ris- will collapse because it’s just too flimsy to withstand
ing exponentially for every tenth of a knot gained. a little extra load, a sensibly scaled mast will do so
Cruising gear may be heavy, but you don’t pay for because something—a clevis pin, a tang, a bolt—
frantic engineering. has worn out, and the sailors have just not attended
A third side effect is peace. Once you get out to it.
of obsessive race mode, you enter a world in which This brings up one last side effect: Molehill care
dismastings are rare, which means you don’t have makes you part of the boat, brings you into its life.
to sweat bullets worrying about a dismasting all the There are few enough sane reasons to go sailing; no
time. Seaworthy rigs sometimes do go overboard, need to throw out the elegant relationship possible
but when they do, it is usually from gear failure, between humans and their vessels.

174