Cable bolt rope with thimble?

[Rockinar]

I got this backup sail for cheap. Im curious about this cable bolt rope setup (its hank on) with bronze thimbles.

Is it any good? Keep it? why the steel cable instead of rope?

[Jammer]

Probably dates from before the widespread availability of Dyneema. Hank-on with a bolt rope is an odd combination. Perhaps a reinforcement someone once thought wise for an older sail.

What to do with it depends on your circumstances. I would take it to a sailmaker and ask if the sail as a whole is fit for purpose as a spare, and if so, what has to be done to it to make it suitable for your boat.

[Bowdrie]

Quite common on smaller boat headsails for longer than any of us on this forum have been alive.
When halyard winches came into use for smaller boats, overzealous winching could pull the sail apart.

[JPA Cate]

Yes, but it's not a bolt rope, it's a luff rope, like for a storm jib, to prevent stretch; and it was for a hank on sail. On Jim's Yankee, he had an old Ratsey Laphorn storm jib with that construction. But, it looks to me as if your ring there at the head of the sail was originally aluminum, and has subsequently had the s/s ring pressed in. And it is being a battery, leaching copper out of the thimble.

Jammer's advice to take it to a sailmaker for a going over and evaluation makes sense to me, especially if it is an old sailmaker with lots of experience. That sail is really OLD. It's hard to think the sailcloth is in good nick. It would be older than 1980, over 40 yrs. old. Jim made a storm jib for his Yankee, which he sold on in 1983, and he used spectra for the luff rope then.

Ann