Halyards

[Cherp]

I am refurbishing the mast on our 40 ft cruising boat. The current halyards are 12 or 14 mm double braid polyester. I am thinking of replacing them with spectra, which is somewhat expensive still. I think 10 mm spectra would be as thin as I would go, or it would be too thin to handle. What are others using for halyards these days?

[Stumble]

A couple things come to mind...

1) the line you are using now is too big. Way too big. On a 12m boat the deck hardware is highly unlikely to be specced to handle 14mm line, so it am guessing you are having massive friction problems in your running rigging. Stepping down to a smaller line is absolutely the way to go, even if you keep with double braid line.

2) 10mm spectra is still massively oversized. It probably falls within the deck hardwares spec size, but you don't need that much strength. Assuming what you have is 12mm, the spectra would be roughly 2.5 times the strength at 10mm.

3) what I did (38' crusing boat) was to go with 1/4 (6mm) spectra, and splice on a cover where needed. This actually works out to be cheaper than a double braided line and it's is much easier to use, lighter, less friction, ect.

Alternatively you can go with a tapered endurabraid halyard which will work out about the same price as double braid poly, and give you most of the advantages. But I like splicing work so the extra fun with ropes doesn't bother me at all.


The one thing I always tell people is to look at the specs on your deck hardware and make sure not to use anything above the maximum size. And keep in mind the MBL of the gear. Winches on your boat probably explode between 1000 and 2000 lbs, so speccing line with a MBL of 16,000 lbs is a little silly.

[zeehag]

as i dont care about the small amount of stretch double braid oproduces, i use what i can find here.
is not necessary to use the most pricey stuff as the longevity factor is more important than the stretch factor.
unless you are made of money and race.

[barnakiel]

I do not like lines less than 10 mm as halyards. I must admit beyond 14 they become an issue too.

Can't see why use high tec while pre-stretched poly is good and inexpensive (relatively) material.

Our halyards are wire to rope and I like them. But I am not religious.

b.

[Jim Cate]

Winches on your boat probably explode between 1000 and 2000 lbs, so speccing line with a MBL of 16,000 lbs is a little silly.

Greg, don't you think that this is a bit exaggerated? A typical primary winch on a 40 foot yacht would be similar in size to a Barient 27. Those winches, and others of similar size produce on the order of 2500 lbs line tension with a force of 100 lbs on a ten inch handle (that is how Barient rated their winches BTW). So it seems unlikely that they would "explode" at a lower load.

This aside, I agree with your size recommendations in general. We have used spectra cored dacron covered double braid, 10 mm diameter, for main and genoa halyards on Insatiable II. Other than a bit of slow creep on the main we have been quite happy with this selection and they are now approaching 10 years of service. The PO had used 13 mm Spectra core and it was too big for the hardware, just as you predicted... lots of friction.

Cheers,

Jim

[Stumble]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

Greg, don't you think that this is a bit exaggerated? A typical primary winch on a 40 foot yacht would be similar in size to a Barient 27. Those winches, and others of similar size produce on the order of 2500 lbs line tension with a force of 100 lbs on a ten inch handle (that is how Barient rated their winches BTW). So it seems unlikely that they would "explode" at a lower load.

This aside, I agree with your size recommendations in general. We have used spectra cored dacron covered double braid, 10 mm diameter, for main and genoa halyards on Insatiable II. Other than a bit of slow creep on the main we have been quite happy with this selection and they are now approaching 10 years of service. The PO had used 13 mm Spectra core and it was too big for the hardware, just as you predicted... lots of friction.

Cheers,

Jim

You are correct Jim I was misreading the specs for a halyard winch for a 12m boat. The SWL is 1500lbs, not the MBL.

[Cherp]

Thank you for the responses. I have gone almost exclusively with 10mm pre-stretched polyester double braid. It's a bit dearer than ordinary double braid, but as it's name suggests, it is better for halyards. The only exception is the spinnaker halyard, which is ordinary double braid. This is because it is not likely to be used.