18 - Rigging Part One
So with some trepidation I started the rigging. The first job was to fix the ratlines. As before I found the recommended knots difficult and messy and it was also almost impossible (at my current skill level) to take a 5mm piece of rope, attach it to another piece and then wrap another rope to tie it off. As the disaster would be greater if I tried this I decided to forgo the pleasure and super glue the ends.
Instantly I hit another problem. My method of tying the two 3 holed blocks together tended to form angled blocks as opposed to nice straight ones. Again this will need improving and some sort of piece of wood to hold the two apart whilst tying may be useful. A tip here looking back is to ensure the 3 holed block attached to the hull is facing the correct way in the earlier step when they were added. Another tip ( sheesh) is that the method of attaching the 3 holed blocks to the hull leaves a lot to be desired. If the attachment is not very strong then the force applied when attaching the rigging will loosen or even snap a weak metal joint and then you have a big problem as at this point the holes for the clips have been sealed with a strip of wood.
The side ropes for the ratlines went on easily enough though in some cases I think a better way of tightening them is required. Again this is probably due to my poor knot choices and the fact that after pulling two 3 holed blocks out of their slots I was less keen on applying a huge amount of pressure. I will look into better ways of self tightening knots before my next model.
The Ratlines themselves were interesting. I can actually see the improvement as I move on from tying the early lower ratlines to the higher ones. I tried the recommended knot and that was huge and difficult to control and then I tried the knot recommended in the Mastine book. That equally did not look smart and ended up using simple hitches. Again not ideal as they would tend to give as you moved up. Maybe it would be improved if I used some glue to seal each ratline before moving to the next? - I may try that way next time moving around all 6 ratline points a time before moving to the next.
Even with all this I still enjoyed attaching the ratlines. My sloop may look like it has been out at sea for years but with the rigging starting to go on the improvement is noticeable. Another nice thing which surprised me was that as you attach the ratlines your eye view looks down upon the deck and you get a very strange sensation of almost climbing the ratlines as you attach them. Having crewed a three masted square rigger before this came as a pleasant shock.
