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Kenyon mast head Trivia

Loren Beach

O34 - Portland, OR
Senior Moderator
Blogs Author
Couple days ago I was replacing both the old spinnaker halyards. The Kenyon spar has a sheave box built in to the mast head that provides a jib halyard under the forestay, and on each side a sheave for port and starboard spinnaker "wing" halyards. There is a polished SS rod cage mounted on the face to guide all of these into their respective slots and when the spinnaker halyard is led off to either side the line is kept 'lined up' on its sheave by that cage.
The sheaves can be removed, carefully, by pulling the axel pin out and sliding the sheaves forward, and this was done 15 years ago when we had the spar down for a re-rig and re-wired project. On the ground these parts are reasonably accessible, albeit it carefully.

So, back to the story. For many years I have always removed a halyard for cleaning or changing by stitching the butt ends together with seizing line and putting a thin layer of tape over the joint. I never knew exactly what it had to navigate by to get thru the mast. It was always pretty easy, albeit with time spent on the stitching part.
(See reply 5 in this prior thread, http://www.ericsonyachts.org/infoex...kle-Knot-questions&highlight=halyard+changing )

So this time when I got one halyard run up and thru, I got lazy when preparing to do the second one. I did the stitching with some gap, like almost an inch between the butts, and then... did not tape over the "splice' completely. When the old one was pulled up and out from the top and the new one followed right up into the mast slot with no friction, I had no knowledge of what these halyards have to transit right at the top where they make the 90 degree turn forward. Two errors, and either one might have been sufficient to cause what happened next. :rolleyes:

So..... everything was fine until I felt a slight catch right at the top where the splice was trying to get over the sheave and then... and then..... and..... one halyard fell down the outside and other one fell down the inside. After some making moaning noises, I did pull out the inside one, out thru the slot.

While I can get to the top, I find it very hard to do any sort of detail work there.
Next = Called the local yard and scheduled us into their docks this am.

What the rigger found up at the top, when he tried to push his small 'fishing' line thru and let the string of weights on the end carry it down was that there was some internal structure to the aluminum casting that was pretty close to the path of the halyard. His educated guess was that separation between the line butts let the following line stick up rather than lie flat on the sheave and it caught firmly and rather than just stop, my (too few) number of whipping lines were weak and parted easily.

So, NO short cuts! Always stitch those ends/butts together firmly! :p

Moral to the story: a very dubious saving of about ten minutes of stitching work ended up costing me $200. and a half day of time going and returning from the yard dock. What is ironic is that in all these years I had no idea what was lurking up inside the very top of the mast... just waiting to teach me a "Kenyon" lesson.
 
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