E 32-3 Headsail Halyard

[Eric B]

Aloha to all!
Needing advice regarding new headsail halyard for my 1988 E 32-3. The current halyard is wire to rope. The wire has, from time to time been getting wrapped around roller-furled headstay. The wire has a permanent curl, and is now stuck badly enough that it will not unfurl.
I had already purchased (though not yet installed) a headstay restrainer to install on the mast, prior to it sticking. My questions now are: should I stick with the wire to rope, or go to an all rope, and if all rope, what is a good cruiser/racer rope? Then if changing to rope, will I need a different sheave?
By the way, anyone that happens to be coming out this way (Honolulu) would be welcome to get in contact with me.
Thanks for any help!

Eric

Ericson 32-3
Liliana

 

[Loren Beach]

My guess is that your boat has a Kenyon spar system like mine, and also the (elderly!) wire-to-rope halyards that we replaced at least a decade ago.
I used T-900 ultra low stretch line, 5/16". I runs thru the original sheaves and does hold in the factory clutch stoppers.
I would recommend it highly.

Previous threads:
http://www.ericsonyachts.org/infoex...835-all-rope-halyards-instead-of-rope-to-wire

http://www.ericsonyachts.org/infoex...rigging-questions-including-all-rope-halyards

http://www.ericsonyachts.org/infoexchange/showthread.php?12284-Halyard-Shackle-Knot-questions

There are others, with some searching....
Good topic, and it comes up regularly.

And for another $.02, just one more thing: avoid using StaSet-X, even tho some chandlers will try to sell it to you.

Regards,
Loren

 

[Christian Williams]

Liking my new Dyneema main halyard. Good on the hand, no stretch, original sheaves.

 

[Rocinante33]

Definitely get rid of the wire to rope line.

I like the Samson XLS Extra T. Probably also 5/16". Good on the hands & a good compromise. Not too expensive and not too stretchy.

If whatever line is too small in diameter to work in your clutches, you can sew on a few feet of oversized cover to increase thickness on the correct section.

 

[tenders]

This may be terribly anachronistic, but I just refurbished my mast and replaced two very vintage (~1990) wire-rope cockpit-led halyards that were actually in pretty good shape. I replaced the main halyard with a traditional low-stretch halyard of the usual diameter, and kept it running to the cockpit.

However, noting that I only haul up the Genoa halyard once a season, I replaced that with a 5/16" Amsteel line, and reinstalled a halyard reel on the mast, using a slab of 1/4" G10 as a backing plate inside the mast. The reel was sourced from eBay. It was cheap and in near-pristine condition.

I'm delighted with it. It works perfectly with the thin Amsteel line (the wire had been 1/4"). The wisdom of running a Genoa halyard to the cockpit became very questionable after the advent of roller furling; there was no benefit to kicking around the hoist of a cockpit-led Genoa halyard all season long. Wish I'd done this years ago.

 

[bgary]

Definitely get rid of the wire to rope line.

I like the Samson XLS Extra T. Probably also 5/16". Good on the hands & a good compromise. Not too expensive and not too stretchy.

If whatever line is too small in diameter to work in your clutches, you can sew on a few feet of oversized cover to increase thickness on the correct section.

+3

Definitely get rid of the wire-to-rope

I have 3/8" halyards on my 32-III, Samson XLS Extra-T on the forward halyards and Samson MLX for the main. Both are polyester cover with a dyneema-based core.

Happy with them. If I were to replace them, I *might* go to the next smaller size (5/16" or 8mm)... the 3/8" works great in the sheaves and exits, but is a little snug in the "stoppers", so if I can't find a way to adjust the jaws in the stopper I *might* think about a smaller diameter.

And, yes, I second the comment about avoiding Sta-Set. There are so many good lines out there - FSE Robline Globe-5000, for example, is a great dyneema-cored line with soft "hand", stronger than Sta-Set, less stretch than Sta-Set, and (usually) significantly less expensive too.

 

[old salt joseph]

Have '89 E 34. I see no red to replace the rope to wire Genoa halyard. Mines in goo shape. Why replace it?

 

[old salt joseph]

Could you give reasoning behind replacement of rope to wire halyard on the Genoa. Thanks Joe I meant good shape not goo shape.

 

[Loren Beach]

Technology and Change

Back in the 60's and 70's when sailing "for the masses" really began to catch on, there was no way to keep decent tension on halyards to maintain sail shape. The rigging wire-of-choice on small frp craft was SS, and had little stretch.
(Galvanized rigging wire certainly existed, but mostly for larger boats and homebuilt craft, and it had/has its own special characteristics.)

Builders figured out that they could used the most flexible lay of ss wire for the part of the running rigging that ran from the head of the sail to the cleat or winch, and eliminate (at least in the practical sense) the stretch that bedeviled an all-rope halyard. On smaller craft like my '76 Ranger 20 the halyards had a swaged eye where the rope tail was tied on, and that was measured to end up a few inches above the cleat on the side of the mast by the gooseneck, for example, when the sail was hoisted.
Larger boats would have the luxury of a much-cooler-looking splice where the wire met the line. The total cost of ss wire, line, and the splice was kinda high, but became accepted for the benefits it conferred. I doubt that many new-comers to the sport, buying used boats, really give a thought to the reason for these particular running rigging parts.

None of this wire/line combo was meant to go into future decades IF it could be replaced by line with the low-stretch characteristics of the lines that were made available to the sailing public in the 80's and beyond. Like the dacron that supplanted cotton for sails and the aluminum that supplanted wood for masts, ultra-low-stretch line replaced the complexity of wire joined to rope tails.

Sometimes in this new century boat owners seem to view this wire with it's meat hooks as something that is a sailing cultural and technical requirement. It's not.
It's just technology that was perfect for its time, and has been surpassed decades ago.

So if you have a classic boat with cotton, wood, and wire-to-rope running rigging... sail on (!) and enjoy your sailing.

Nothing wrong with it... but to me it would be like still owning the TR-3a I drove in the 60's. Lots of extra maintenance but a load of fun when all the parts were working!
Man......when that vehicle was running and I was cruising the countryside on a sunny morning I loved it.
Not so much when pieces were failing or breaking.

To repeat a mantra here: there are often no wrong answers, but some perspective seems to help a bit.
Comments worth a penny, and YMMV.

Regards,
Loren

(who who would replace his old fashioned aluminum spars with carbon fiber if the price ever came down enough. )

 

[old salt joseph]

Thanks Loren, I appreciate the backround info. Anyone else like to chime in on this issue?

 

[Christian Williams]

I kept the wire halyard on the furling genny. It rarely gets touched.

I went to a rope mainsail halyard mostly because it allows "jumping" the halyard where it exits the mast.

 

[old salt joseph]

Please excuse my ignorance,Christian, but what do you mean by "jumping" the main halyard where it exits the mast?

 

[Rocinante33]

Joe,

Whatever works well for you is what is best. I wouldn't change it just for changes sake, either. You really might want to think twice before a change if you have to change hardware like sheaves or winches.

But when it is time to change, new lines are stronger and they are lighter. That lighter weight is weight aloft so it is extra beneficial.

Finally, the noise of a wire halyard slapping the mast is awful, not that the noise of standard line is great either, but......

 

[Christian Williams]

Sorry, "jumping" may not be standard jargon everywhere.

For a halyard led back to the cockpit, it just means hauling down the halyard hand over hand at the mast, without benefit of winch, often while somebody in the cockpit takes up the slack.

Faster, easier. But not pleasant with a wire halyard.

For raising a bigger mainsail alone, a cam cleat on the mast base allows the halyard to be jumped and then temporarily secured on the mast. The operator then goes to the cockpit, takes up the slack, and puts it on the winch for the final few feet and appropriate luff tension.

A winch is always required after jumping gets the main 95 percent up.

 

[Rocinante33]

I thought you may have meant that, in the event of a halyard override on the winch, to tie another line using a rolling hitch, e.g., lead that line to anther winch, perhaps by way of a block, and to take up the tension so the override can be cleared from the winch.

Ha! I guess I don't know the term (or if there is one) for this process which I thought may have been, "jumping the line," but it is another small reason to consider all rope halyards.

 

[bgary]

Anyone else like to chime in on this issue?

Just one more tidbit from the dustbin of history.

While many boats had halyards made of stainless wire, the really cool race boats of the day had galvanized wire.

The "thinking" was that when stainless fatigues it gets brittle and just lets go with a bang... but galvanized will "tell you" that it is time to replace through an increase in the number of meat-hooks and some visible rusting.

Between handling wire halyards, jibsheets and afterguys.... and making up new ones in my rigging shop... it's pretty amazing my fingers still work.

So, yeah, I'm a fan of getting rid of wire.

 

[bgary]

Oh, and I'll add a bit of opinion on the new super-strong/low-stretch lines.

They're great... but in some cases they may be *too* strong.

Case in point, when making some new jibsheets recently I had a recommendation from a friend to look at Samson's "Control DPX"... a dyneema-cored line with a soft cover and very little stretch.

I looked at the spec and found that its listed "mean breaking strength" is 11,000 pounds in 3/8".

In context, that means that a length of 3/8" DPX is strong enough to lift my 9800-pound boat, with a 10% margin.

That....makes me nervous. Maybe it's just me, but I want lines to break before the mast (or the boat!) does. In the old days, we had that thinking around spinnaker halyards - the jib halyard might be wire-rope, but generally spin halyards were all line because we *wanted* a little give in them - if a flogging spinnaker all-of-a-sudden fills with a jolt, we wanted that jolt to be absorbed by the line rather than break the mast.

So I went with another line, in an attempt to balance the properties of modern materials, and the right sizes for the application, while making sure there was some "give" in the system.

ymmv

 

[Eric B]

My guess is that your boat has a Kenyon spar system like mine, and also the (elderly!) wire-to-rope halyards that we replaced at least a decade ago.
I used T-900 ultra low stretch line, 5/16". I runs thru the original sheaves and does hold in the factory clutch stoppers.
I would recommend it highly.

Previous threads:
http://www.ericsonyachts.org/infoex...835-all-rope-halyards-instead-of-rope-to-wire

http://www.ericsonyachts.org/infoex...rigging-questions-including-all-rope-halyards

http://www.ericsonyachts.org/infoexchange/showthread.php?12284-Halyard-Shackle-Knot-questions

There are others, with some searching....
Good topic, and it comes up regularly.

And for another $.02, just one more thing: avoid using StaSet-X, even tho some chandlers will try to sell it to you.

Regards,
Loren

Yes, Loren, Kenyon spar. The T-900 looks like the right alternative (although the stayset xls extra T doesn't look too bad at $100 less) and I believe that my clutches and sheaves are the originals.
Thanks for the other threads, and all of your help!

Eric

 

[Eric B]

This may be terribly anachronistic, but I just refurbished my mast and replaced two very vintage (~1990) wire-rope cockpit-led halyards that were actually in pretty good shape. I replaced the main halyard with a traditional low-stretch halyard of the usual diameter, and kept it running to the cockpit.

However, noting that I only haul up the Genoa halyard once a season, I replaced that with a 5/16" Amsteel line, and reinstalled a halyard reel on the mast, using a slab of 1/4" G10 as a backing plate inside the mast. The reel was sourced from eBay. It was cheap and in near-pristine condition.

I'm delighted with it. It works perfectly with the thin Amsteel line (the wire had been 1/4"). The wisdom of running a Genoa halyard to the cockpit became very questionable after the advent of roller furling; there was no benefit to kicking around the hoist of a cockpit-led Genoa halyard all season long. Wish I'd done this years ago.

Thanks Tenders. Interesting custom job on the genoa halyard!
In my case, all year round here in Hawaii, it is not unusual to have a frequent alternating mix of winds between 7kts to 20 knts within a few hours time. So, I may change my headsail halyard tension numerous times throughout the day. I can adjust from the cockpit which makes a huge difference for me.

Eric

 

[Eric B]

Joe,

Whatever works well for you is what is best. I wouldn't change it just for changes sake, either. You really might want to think twice before a change if you have to change hardware like sheaves or winches.

But when it is time to change, new lines are stronger and they are lighter. That lighter weight is weight aloft so it is extra beneficial.

Finally, the noise of a wire halyard slapping the mast is awful, not that the noise of standard line is great either, but......

Thanks Keith. When I install the new halyard restrainer (is my boat the only one that seems to need this?) I will be taking a closer look at the condition of the sheave, and how to remove it, if necessary.

Eric