Jury rigging

Not to be confused with Jury tampering.

In maritime transport and sailing, jury rigging or jury-rigging^[1] is making temporary makeshift running repairs with only the tools and materials on board. It originates from sail-powered boats and ships. Jury-rigging can be applied to any part of a ship; be it its super-structure (hull, decks), propulsion systems (mast, sails, rigging, engine, transmission, propeller), or controls (helm, rudder, centreboard, daggerboards, rigging).

Model showing a method for jury-rigging a rudder

Similarly, a jury mast is a replacement mast after a dismasting.^[2] If necessary, a yard would also be fashioned and stayed to allow a watercraft to resume making way.

Rigging

Three variations of the jury mast knot.

A sail-powered boat may carry a limited amount of repair materials, from which some form of jury-rig can be fashioned. Additionally, anything salvageable, such as a spar or spinnaker pole, could be adapted to carry a makeshift sail.

Ships typically carried a selection of spare parts such as topmasts. However, due to their much larger size, at up to 1 metre (3 ft 3 in) in diameter, the lower masts were too large to carry as spares. Example jury-rig configurations include:

• A spare topmast
• The main boom of a brig
• Replacing the foremast with the mizzenmast (mentioned in William N. Brady's The Kedge Anchor, or Young Sailors' Assistant, 1852)
• The bowsprit set upright and tied to the stump of the original mast.

The jury mast knot may provide anchor points for securing makeshift stays and shrouds to support a jury mast, although there is differing evidence of the knot's actual historical use.^[3][4][5]

Jury-rigs are not limited to sail-powered boats. Any unpowered watercraft can carry jury sail. A rudder, tiller, or any other component can be jury-rigged by improvising a repair out of materials at hand.^[1]

Similar terms

• Jerry-built things, which are things 'built unsubstantially of bad materials', has a separate unknown etymology. It is probably linked to earlier pejorative uses of the word jerry, attested as early as 1721, and may have been influenced by jury-rigged.^[6][7][8] The blended terms jerry rigging and jerry-rigged are also common.^[9][10]
• Afro engineering (short for African engineering)^[11] or nigger-rigging^[12] is a fix that is temporary, done quickly, technically improperly, or without attention to or care for detail. It can also be shoddy, second-rate workmanship, with whatever available materials.^[13] Nigger-rigging originated in the 1950s United States;^[11] the term was euphemized as afro engineering in the 1970s^[12][14] and later again as ghetto rigging. The terms have been used in the U.S. auto mechanic industry to describe quick makeshift repairs.^[15] These phrases have largely fallen out of common usage due to their colloquial nature, but are occasionally used within the African-American community.^{[16][17][18][19]}
• The American expression redneck technology similarly refers to crude forms of technology, often hastily or poorly finished, but broadly functional.^[20]
• To MacGyver (or MacGyverize) something is to rig up something in a hurry using materials at hand, from the title character of the American television show of the same name, who specialized in such improvisation stunts.^[21]
• In New Zealand, having a Number 8 wire mentality means to have the ability to make or repair something using any materials at hand, such as standard farm fencing wire.^[22]
• In British slang, bodge and bodging refer to doing a job serviceably but inelegantly using whatever tools and materials are at hand; the term derives from bodging, for expedient woodturning using unseasoned, green wood (especially branches recently removed from a nearby tree).
• The chiefly English term do-it-yourself (DIY) relatedly refers to creating, repairing, or modifying things without professional or expert assistance.
• Similar concepts in other languages include: jugaad in Hindi and jugaar in Urdu, urawaza (裏技) in Japanese, tapullo in Genoese dialect, tǔ fǎ (土法) in Chinese, Trick 17 in German, desenrascar in Portuguese and gambiarra in Brazilian Portuguese, degaje in Haitian Creole, système D in French, jua kali in Swahili. Several equivalent terms in South Africa are n boer maak 'n plan in Afrikaans, izenzele in Zulu, iketsetse in Sotho, and itirele in Tswana.^[23]

See also

• Kludge – Unmaintainable solution
• Repurposing – Using object intended for one purpose in alternative way