John Franta // Synthetic Rigging

On the Wind Sailing

Andy Schell

Sports, Wilderness, Places & Travel, Society & Culture

4.8 • 593 Ratings

🗓️ 19 August 2014

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

#45. John Franta is the brains behind Colligo Marine and their synthetic rigging products. Andy met John in 2009 at the Annapolis Sailboat Show and has been friends with him since. Arcturus was the first monohull that we know of that crossed an ocean with Colligo Dux synthetic rigging, and John and Andy have been working together on promoting synthetic rigging for cruising boats since their first meeting. They discuss the business behind Colligo and how John transitioned from a corporate job as an engineer at GM, to a start-up founder with Colligo. He's an inventor and a businessperson, and that combination is truly inspiring. Sklp to about minute 22 if you want to get right into the technical aspects of synthetic versus wire rigging. Check out Colligo on colligomarine.com.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, welcome to... Sorry.
0:02.8	That's okay.
0:04.6	Hey, welcome to 59 degrees north with Andy Schell. Enjoy the show.
0:09.9	Greetings. Welcome back to the 59 North Sailing Podcast. I'm your host, Andy Schell, and this is episode number 45.
0:16.9	A few events and reminders coming up. We've got the 59 North live podcast at the Boat Show as part of World Cruising Club's Ocean Sailing Forum. We'll be recording that forum that I'll be moderating with special guests Paul and Cheryl Shard of Distant Shores TV show, plus a few Caribbean 1500 participants and an editor from sale magazine. You can get tickets for that on worldcruising.com slash training, and that's limited. We have a limited space at O'Callaghan Hotel, and with your ticket, you get a pass into the boat show for that day. It's Saturday, October 11th. Also, I'm doing my Celestial Navigation Seminar in November, November 22nd, 23rd at the National Sailing Hall of Fame in Annapolis.
0:55.8	Limited to 12 people, you can sign up for that on 59-north.com slash events.
1:01.7	All right, episode number 45. This is one I've been waiting to do for a long time now.
1:06.1	Actually, since the podcast got started, I've wanted to talk to John Franta, who's our guest today. We've had a
1:12.1	couple people email in with requests to discuss more about synthetic rigging. And rather than just
1:17.7	me talking about it on one of the essay episodes, I thought, well, let's talk about it with the guy
1:21.9	who sort of brought synthetic rigging to the cruising market. John runs Caligo Marine, and they make Coligo Ducks synthetic
1:29.5	rigging systems. They make all the shroud terminals. They make Luffline Roller Furlers. John is an
1:36.8	inventor. He's an engineer at heart. He started working as an engineer for General Motors.
1:42.1	We sort of talked about his company as it's come up in the last
1:46.7	eight to ten years and how he's grown a successful business. I'm interested in that side of
1:52.2	things as much as I'm interested in the sailing side of things. So we started off talking about that
1:56.1	and how he transitioned from a career as an employee and a corporate giant at GM to setting out in his own
2:02.7	and creating a startup company based on sailing.
2:06.6	So that was how we started.
2:08.9	And if you're interested in the more technical side of things, we discuss rig design and how
2:12.4	to transition from a wire to a synthetic rig.
2:14.9	If you're interested in that, if you want to skip the business stuff,
	...

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