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How to replace a 'lost' halyard?


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My spinnaker halyard broke last season and completely came down through the mast. I'm wondering how to install a new one. I assume that it somehow has to get fed through the mast. Will the mast have to be unstepped?

 

Any help would be appreciated.

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Guest Chris DOyle
My spinnaker halyard broke last season and completely came down through the mast. I'm wondering how to install a new one. I assume that it somehow has to get fed through the mast. Will the mast have to be unstepped?

 

Any help would be appreciated.

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Guest Chris Doyle

Sorry about the last phantom post... .

 

You can do it with the mast up, but the easiest way is to do it with the mast down. You'll need pvc tape (eletrical tape does nicely), a new spinnaker halyard, and a flashlight. A six inch piece of thin wire may also be helpful.

 

Steps:

 

1. Take mast down. Ideally it should come right off of the boat and placed on saw horses or a picnic table.

 

2. Remove the headstay (I'll tell you why later).

 

3. If you have a Hall Spar, remove the bottom casting (the black aluminum thingy with the four sheaves in it). To do this, you remove the three or four machine screws (or the two bolts) attaching it to the base of the mast extrusion. You may also need to remove the bottom machine screw from the Cunningham cheek block at the bottom of the extrusion.

 

4. Remove the sheave box where the jib and spnnaker halyards come out of the mast. To do this, remove the two machine screws attaching it to the extrusion, and then push the sheave box down the extrusion two inches, and pull the top of the sheave box out of the hole in the extrusion for the sheave box (sounds complicated, but it's not).

 

5. Place the mast so the mainsail groove is down, and feed the top of the forestay up through the extrusion until you can see the top of the forestay at the hole in the extrusion for the jib/spin sheave box. Make sure that the forestay passes behind (underneath) the spreader compression bar.

 

6. If your new halyard has a shackle on it, pass the bottom end of the halyard through the spinnaker sheave in the jib/spin sheave box, tape the bottom end of the new halyard on to the top end of the forestay, pull the forestay out of the bottom of the extrusion, bringing the bottom end of the new spinnaker halyard with it, untape the bottom of the new spinnaker halyard from the forestay, and pass the bottom of the new spinnaker halyard through the spinnaker sheave in the bottom casting (making sure that all halyards pass aft of the spreader compression bar and that the halyards are not twisted inside of the extrusion by tensioning the halyards and checking them by looking through the bottom of the extrusion with the flashlight shining up through the extrusion). The toughest part of this step is getting the bottom of the new halyard through the sheave in the bottom casting. The easiest way to do this is to take your six inch piece of thin wire, put the ends together creating a loop, pass the loop through the correct sheave hole in the bottom casting, back to front, dropping the bottom end of the new halyard into the wire loop that is now inside the casting and then pulling the wire loop out of the back of the casting bringing the bottom of the new halyard with it.

 

7. Since you have the bottom casting and the sheave box out, why don't you give both of those a good lube job with McLube?

 

8. Reinstall the jib/spin sheave box, using the screws you removed and blue Locktite thread sealer. Make sure you do not twist the halyards when doing the reinstallation

 

9. Reinstall the bottom casting using the machine screws you took out and red Locktite thread sealer. Before you do this, just check one more time that you haven't twisted the halyards by shining the flashlight up through the extrusion from the bottom.

 

10. Reinstall the forestay.

 

11. Put the mast back up.

 

12.. And for goodness sake, tie knots on the bottom ends of your halyards and topping lift after you have re-run them to their respective cleats!

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Mr. Guest Chris Doyle,

Nice write-up, but you jumped ahead with step 1.

 

Step #1 - Chill a 12 pack of beer.

 

In case y'all haven't figured it out, I now have a login to this new forum. The login police don't like apostrophes, spaces, or other punctuation. I'd say f*ck 'em all (but 6 for pall bearers), but the b*stards forced me to to give into their chickensh*t censor f*ggot (apologies to my gay friends) Draconian monitoring that won't even allow you to punctuate. That's "punctuate", not "fornicate" on this here forum. They don't let you swear here either. Hope this helps. vic

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There's a couple write-ups here:

http://www.geocities.com/j22canada/j22faqC...m#raisemast2man

 

Our great friends to the north (Canada) have kept the old information available thanks mostly to Roy Spencer.

 

http://www.geocities.com/J22canada/

 

Particularly the "J22 Canada FAQ" and "Desperado's J22 DIY" found on the left side of the page.

 

Hope this helps. vic

 

 

Guest_Chris Doyle_*

 

Thank you so much for that write-up. Does anyone know of a good tutorial for unstepping the mast? I've never done it before (on any boat).

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Vic - that helped a lot, thanks!

 

So I've replaced the spinnaker halyard but I'm not sure if I have it coming out of the sheave box properly. Here's a photo of how it looks now:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shig/3361505876/

 

I assume that the spinnaker halyard should come out of the sheave box so that it is forward of the front stay (as it currently is) when the mast is up. This way, when tied off, it partially wraps around the front stay when secured, but when using the spinnaker, it is completely unobstructed.

 

I just wanted to check to make sure I was right before putting the mast back up.

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Guest Chris Doyle

Looks right to me.

 

Vic - that helped a lot, thanks!

 

So I've replaced the spinnaker halyard but I'm not sure if I have it coming out of the sheave box properly. Here's a photo of how it looks now:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shig/3361505876/

 

I assume that the spinnaker halyard should come out of the sheave box so that it is forward of the front stay (as it currently is) when the mast is up. This way, when tied off, it partially wraps around the front stay when secured, but when using the spinnaker, it is completely unobstructed.

 

I just wanted to check to make sure I was right before putting the mast back up.

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  • 2 months later...

I'm honestly not sure, although now that I've replaced it, it dawned on me that I may not have fixed the root of the problem. I don't recall hearing any clunking, but my old halyard certainly was old, so it could've been normal wear.

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