If you are going to go somewhere on your boat, you have to expect gear will wear and sometime break, so you have to carry spares and the tools you’ll need to make repairs. Here are three essential spares to carry for the mast and rig:
1. A length of extremely strong, low-stretch line such as Dyneema that is longer than your longest shroud, usually the fore or backstay. Unlike coiled 1 by 19 wire, line will stow away in a small space and can be cut with a sharp knife. But it will be strong enough to hold up your rig should you lose a stay in bad weather.
2. Assorted clevis pins, split pins, shackles and toggles. You never know when you might drop a pin or shackle over the side or break a split pin. Make sure you have several of all of the sizes of each item on your boat. A spare toggle or two will help you jury rig things if you need to set up an emergency shroud. Some long distance sailors carry spare turnbuckles, too.
3. Extra large stainless steel hose clamps in sizes that will fit around your boom, mast, boom vang and spinnaker pole. With hose clamps and assorted items aboard the boat, you can mend a broken boom or spinnaker pole. With large clamps, you can jury rig a mast or temporarily repair a damaged mast.
A safe sailor is a self sufficient sailor. Don’t forget your bosun’s chair, too.
Also important in the standing rigging discussion is a way to tension the emergency stay. Either lashings to the chainplate or a jaw/jaw turnbuckle will be necessary. If lashings are the choice, a shackle to offer a point of attachment for the lashings will be critical to success.
In the case of a headstay failure – consider the need for a means of attaching a headsail to the new stay if a furler is the only sail system used forward.
That’s the beauty of the Hunter B&R rig. If you lose a shroud or the forestay with an in mast selden furler forget it unless your towing a sea crane behind you… Yeah maybe you could rig a drogue to the mast and tie off the bottom in place… throw it in reverse real fast and pull up that 58 feet of mast… but you may have a easier time of borrowing Amelia Earhart’s radio to call for help… No I think if you are out to sea and this rig goes down, you have a power boat.