Saving the Sails: The Importance of Baggywrinkle

One of the secret handshakes among sailors aboard traditional vessels is “baggywrinkle”. If you meet someone who knows what it is, you’ve found one of us. Though it sounds like a made-up nonsense word from some children’s book, it is in fact a legitimate term for an important feature of traditional rigging. It’s also the answer to the most frequently asked Open Ship question; “What are the fuzzy things in the rigging?”

Anywhere a sail could rub or press against the standing rigging is a spot that will chafe and wear a hole in the canvas. To prevent this we create a soft, resilient padding attached to the wire rope. This is baggywrinkle.

Baggywrinkle is made by cutting rope into short sections about a foot long, and unlaying it down to the rope yarns. These are then middled and hitched one after another to a pair of base strands of net twine, creating a long fringe. This is then wound spirally around the wire rope, making something akin to a giant bottle brush.

Though frequently described as being made of “old rope”, baggywrinkle is best made of new manila rope. The fibers of old plant-based rope are too weak and broken to stand up as effective baggywrinkle. Most synthetics will not do for baggywrinkle, either. Their fibers lack the springiness to stand out, and instead droop down like a sad mop. The one exception to this is polypropylene, which can make functional baggywrinkle at the expense of releasing loads of microplastics as it breaks down (it also comes in a variety of colors, but anything other than brown looks ridiculous).

The most common locations for baggywrinkle on Gazela is on the quarterlifts protecting the mainsail or mizzen, or on the kingstay where the course bellies up to it.