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Wire Rope Halyards

dustintodd

Member II
My 35-3 has wire halyards. The main seems to be in good shape but the jib halyard is showing a few broken strands. The wire halyards seem like a good idea but for the fact that they are hard to replace. I would like to switch to a more standard rope halyard (Dacron?). Any gotchas and/or considerations before taking this on?
 

Chris Miller

Sustaining Member
There's absolutely no reason to stay with wire- it's heavy (reducing righting moment and thus performance) and hard on hands and sheaves/blocks. Just make sure to double check your masthead sheave to make sure it doesn't have any burrs that might destroy a new rope halyard.

If you are looking for rope halyards, feel free to email or PM me- I do running rigging work and can save you some little cash if you like- but any reputable rigging shop can get you fixed right up.

Chris
 

chaco

Member III
The Gotcha

The Gotcha may be the size of the existing Shive in the Masthead :cool:
The halyard wire on the 35II is 3/16" and the max shive line size is 1/4".
The larger 5/16-3/8" halyard line may not work on your Shive.
It's time for a climb to verify your existing rigging :nerd:
I will have to change out Shives to make the change to line halyards.

Happy Bosons Chair :egrin: :egrin:
 

Loren Beach

O34 - Portland, OR
Senior Moderator
Blogs Author
Line!

Not much to add to the excellent observations from Chris and Dan.
I can tell you from personal experience with out '88 (Kenyon spar) that when I changed over to line the masthead sheaves did need to be smoothed up from many years of scratches and abrasion from the wires.

Also, I tried 3/8 and 5/16 "T-900" and found that the former would rub on the cheeks a bit, and so went with 5/16. The later will hold in the factory clutch stoppers... and with a strength of 7000# is as strong as most wire shrouds!
:)

Since halyards are always final-tensioned on a housetop winch, I have not found that handling the "smaller" lines is a problem.

YMMV.

Loren
 

Cory B

Sustaining Member
Rope size

We replaced our wire-to-rope halyards with 3/8" T900 (moderately hi-tech). We also replaced the sheaves at the the same time. On our boat at least, there might have been room for 7/16" halyards, but it would have been close. I don't think we could have gotten 1/2" through the sheaves without some binding. 3/8" is just enough to grab on to for halyards. Limiting ourselves to 3/8" meant Dacron wouldn't be sufficient. If you are patient and wait for "a deal" you can usually find some hi-tech line for an affordable price on line. Our 3/8" T-900 ended up only costing us a few nickels more per foot than 1/2" StasetX.
 

rwthomas1

Sustaining Partner
I am likely the only dissenter on this topic here on the board. For a jib halyard, especially if you have roller furling I don't see the issue with wire/rope halyards. Most of the time it goes up and down once a year. As for the issue of handling being wire/rope, almost never do I have to even touch the wire! The only time is unclipping the main halyard and reattaching it to the head of the mainsail. Since my boat had new wire/rope setups on it when I bought her I wasn't running out to change them. When they wear I'll price the high tech stuff and the wire/rope. Whatevers cheaper will go on. Weight is the only argument that I can buy but since I don't race its not really a factor either. Just my 2cents.... RT
 
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