The Coolest Halyard on the Planet

The other day a club member proudly showed me a very clever modification he has made to his boat, and it's worth passing on. He calls it his "geezer halyard." This sailor is in his early 70's, not ready to give up sailing, but ready for some of the harder physical tasks to be a little easier.

Meanwhile I had heard from an old friend -- my long-lost first husband, actually, the man who introduced me to sailing and got me so hooked on it that I spent nearly 40 years daydreaming about returning to the sport some day. While he is generally in good health, he had to have rotater cuff surgery not that long ago, and was looking for easier ways to handle his boat. However, this adaptation isn't just for "senior citizens." I have a thirty-year-old daughter who has also had rotater cuff surgery. The truth is that any of us can have some sort of injury at any time that could make sailing harder for us.

If you look at the picture below, you'll actually see a couple of things this clever inventor has done to make his boat easier to manage. If you see the triangular thing sticking off the mast, that's one of a series of mast steps. With those mast steps, he can still climb his own mast.

Which he did. At the top, he used a pop rivet gun to attach a piece of hardware at the *very top* of the side of the mast. He attached an extra long halyard to that hardware. before leading that halyard through its sheave at the top of the mast, he first dropped it to near the bottom, and fed it through a block attached to a snapshackle. Then he took the halyard back to the top of the mast, through the sheave, back down the mast and through turn blocks to run it back to the cabin top and cockpit. (You don't have to run your halyards back to the cockpit, but it will make the boat much easier and safer to sail single-handed.)

In the picture below, the snapshackle for his halyard is run back to a loop on the top of his StackPack. If you're going to attach your halyard to a lifeline, that will require a little more length as well, so measure appropriately.

The "Geezer Halyard." You can see the extended halyard dropping

from the top of the mast, through a block, and back up again.

When he's ready to sail, he moves the snapshackle from his StackPack to the head of his sail. Because of the block attached to the snapshackle, he now has 2:1 purchase on his halyard. I tried it. His halyard is remarkably easy to raise. It certainly would make the task easier not only for those with shoulder injuries, but those with bad backs or arthritis in their hands.

This sailor put his block and snapshackle together from hardware he already had, but he's going to make a few changes.

First of all, the snapshackle he used is the type that swivels. This allows the two lengths of halyard going up to the sheave to twist, so it has introduced one more thing that can go wrong while raising the sail. Below are pictures of hardware I found at West Marine, a single block, and a non-swiveling snapshackle to attach to the becket.

Hardware used to connect your 2:1 halyard to the head of your sail

 It's still possible to get the two lengths of halyard twisted, but it's a good practice to eyeball the entire length of your halyard to look for things it might be hung up on anyway. The block costs about $36 at West Marine, and the snapshackle about $22. It's crucial that you use stainless steel hardware. You do not want your hardware to break at the top of the mast.

Besides the extra (but avoidable) chance of a fouled halyard, there are two other downsides to this adaptation. First, you'll have a lot of extra line in the cockpit after the sail is raised. Once your halyard is raised, you're going to have extra halyard in the cockpit. One option is to take a moment and hank the dangling halyard. If your halyard has a dedicated winch, you can put a loop over the winch, and the halyard will be stowed neatly. You can also find "line bags" on line you can hang near the bottom of your mast or in your cockpit to catch that line.

Second, you will have increased the number of turns your halyard has to make as you drop it. You may find that you have to go to the mast and help encourage the sail to drop when you're ready to take the sails down.

There's one more thing you might want to note about the hardware shown above: the sheave in the block I photographed is black. It seems counter-intuitive, but black plastic is more resistant to damage from UV rays than white. A block with a black sheave in it will last longer than one with a white sheave.

Finally, make sure your halyard size runs freely through the block, and that the snapshackle is large enough to attach easily to the head of your sail. If you choose a piece of hardware with a pin in it, make sure it's of a type where the pin can't be completely removed. The halyard hardware on my first boat used a pin that could fall out, and it did within five days. Then, of course, it bounced on the cabin top and into the marina. If a crucial piece of hardware can free itself it will, laughing all the way to the bottom.

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Why It Was Hard to Raise and Lower My Mainsail

      Or, Bigger isn’t always better!

April 29, 2013

     “Mine’s bigger!”

Some braggart

  Ever since I bought this boat more than two years ago, it’s been difficult to get the mainsail up and down. Even using a winch, it took a lot of muscle power to get the sail up. When it was time to come in, I had to go up to the mast and tug the sail all the way down.

I have “lazy jacks” on my boat. These are lines that pull out of the way to the mast when not needed. However, when you want to lower the mainsail, you tighten them by pulling on one small line on each side of the mast, and three lines spread out on each side like a basket. They catch the dropping sail, which should drop like a stone when released.

So dropping the sail should be a piece of cake. It’s quite convenient when single-handing, because you don’t have to try to both manage the boat and secure the mainsail with ties immediately so it won’t flop around and block your vision all at the same time.

But no matter what I did, the sail never dropped easily. It would drop a few feet, and then stop. I would have to go up to the mast and manually pull the sail down. That’s what you call inconvenient.

Someone put lubricant on a paper towel and forced it to slide up the groove in the mast where the slots that hold the sail to the mast travel. It didn’t help. I sprayed the slots with silicon spray. It didn’t work. I tried other lubricants, such as WD-40 and PB Blaster. Nothing worked.

Then one day about six months ago, someone said, “Are you sure this is the right sized halyard for the blocks in your mast?” Not being Superman, I lacked x-ray vision, couldn’t see inside the mast, but as we looked at the line, it looked “fuzzy” –- it had been rubbing on something. This wasn't degredation from UV rays; that part of the halyard had been protected in the mast.

So I put a new halyard on the mainsail, one size smaller than the old line. Immediately, the sail dropped like a stone any time I released it. That’s all you have to do on my boat now when coming in –- tighten the lazy jack lines and release the mainsail, and it drops like a stone, perfectly contained and under control.

So then I started thinking about my traveler. It was also hard to work, and its lines were fuzzy also. So I looked at the blocks (unlike my situation with the mast, they are all visible on the traveler), and sure enough, two of them were quite small. The line was much too big for the smallest blocks it had to move through, causing a lot of unnecessary friction. This is actually fairly serious, because one very good strategy if you get hit with a sudden gust of wind is to depower the mainsail by releasing the traveler.

I had done all the same things to the traveler that I had tried with the mainsail – lubricating everything with multiple lubricants, with minimal or no improvement. Now I have smaller line on my traveler, and it works reliably and with ease.

It also turned out that the headsail sheets –- the sheets you use to tack your jib or Genoa – were too big. I had self-tailing winches that couldn’t self-tail because the line used was too big. I’d found that mistake early on because its effects were so obvious, but it hadn’t occurred to me that the previous owner might have oversized other lines as well.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that “bigger is better” –- even safer –- than smaller lines, but particularly when it came to the mainsail, the opposite was true. Someone had to go stand on the cabin top and reach way up to pull the sail down. Even holding on with one hand, that’s an inherently unbalanced position. The cabin top of my boat has multiple levels and curves, and it’s easy to take a misstep.

Your mainsail halyard, especially if it moves through the inside of your mast, has to make a number of turns. This is increased if your mainsail sheet comes back to your cockpit, and you need that if you’re going to single-hand your boat. My personal opinion is that all small and mid-sized sailboats should have running rigging that allows you to single-hand. Maybe you never intend on doing that, but if your sailing partner sprains an ankle, you’ll have a much easier time getting back in if all your running rigging comes back to the cockpit. You’ll also have your crew in a safer position than standing at the mast to raise and lower the sail.

Since this happened I’ve heard similar stories from a number of other sailors. So if you find the lines on your boat seem to fight you, first trace them to make sure they’re not caught on something (mainsail halyards, for instance, are notorious for getting caught on things like the steaming light), and then consider whether the line is actually the right size for the mechanical parts it must travel through in order to do its job.

You should always wear gloves when sailing. You’ll be able to grip the lines better and pull harder, without worrying about a rope burn. But in addition, gloves also make it easier to get a good grasp on smaller diameter lines. Bigger isn’t better. The line that fits the hardware it will travel through is the size you want.