Problem: Under steady high loads, spectra “creeps” or gets slowly longer. Very low stretch under oscillating loads. For Bay racing jibsheet shackles are nice for tacking, but for ocean sailing knots are fine. Dacron is too stretchy for jibsheets unless you want to constantly adjust them for every puff and wave. JIBSHEETS: Go for a line with a high tech core. One good “halyard wrap” and a halyard can be messed up good. Flip them behind the shrouds when not in use. If you have a jib furler, remember to keep the spin halyards out of the way. There is also good ol beeswax and leather, which are sometimes hard to beat. There are now very effective urethane coatings that really help. Use “internal release” style shackles that can be spiked open under load and also have less of a tendency to “flog off”.Ĭonsult with a rigger on how to properly prepare the spinnaker lines for chafe. These bear on the donuts better and allow enough room to hook the guy into the sheet shackle bail. SHACKLES: For both the spin sheet and the guys use large bail shackles. Svendsens makes a high load aluminum donut that I designed for boats over 50’. On larger boats you may need an aluminum donut that won’t split under high load. Use a heavy “donut” to keep the shackle from messing the pole end or getting stuck. For the guy itself it is hard to beat single braid spectra for its wear and flex life. For boats over 35’ or so I highly recommend an offshore style pole end with a lot of bearing area for the rope. I prefer not to run more than one external to avoid having too much line flopping around.ĪFTERGUYS: The afterguys take a lot of wear at the pole tip so one thing to check is the pole ends. The extra windage won’t hurt off the wind. It is customary to run at least one spin halyard external for these downwind races. These mastheads are fine as long as the chafe bars or rollers have enough smooth surface area for the rope to bend around and spread the load out. Make sure that there are no sharp metal edges touching the line.įor a tri-sec style masthead, if you had wire halyards get rid of them (more on this later). Many wraps of spectra can be incredibly strong, light, and can flex forever. It is becoming very popular to use spectra webbing or lashing here instead of shackles. These often tend to saw through each other. Also check the wear at the interface of the U-bolt and the block shackle. If you have externally hung blocks, make sure the bracket that extends them out from the masthead goes far enough to allow the blocks to swing well clear of the headstay or anything else. ![]() MASTHEAD: The 2 most common masthead setups for spin halyards are externally hung blocks off of U-bolts, or a “Tri-sec” type where the halyards exit straight off the sheaves over chafe bars or rollers. What often works for a whole season on the Bay gets wasted surprisingly fast in heavy ocean reaching and running. These lines take tremendous flex and wear in a downwind race. SPINNAKER GEAR: Probably the most common problems are with spinnaker halyards and afterguys. The only drawback with these as halyards is that they are so light that if you let go of the end of the halyard it blows far away from the boat. ![]() These assemblies look pretty much like a wire/rope halyard except the wire is single braid line. The high tech fiber lines give the very best strength to weight ratio when the “single braid” (12-strand) style is used with dacron sleeving added where you need to hang onto it. ![]() For a non-surfing boat plain dacron line may be ok for the spinnaker halyards but not for much else. Wire is still more economical than high tech line but I would only use it on the main and jib halyards if you need to pinch $. Spectra, Technora, or Vectran fiber all have about the same stretch as wire and are lighter and more flex resistant. ![]() You are nuts if you don’t, unless you’ve done it recently or want to spend a lot of time pulling yourself up and down. On a long ocean race, problems with halyards and running rigging are among the most common of failures. As you prepare for the West Marine Pacific Cup, you’ll hear this over and over: “This (fill in the blank) is really, really important, don’t skimp on the bucks on this one or you’ll be screwed.” I wish I could say it is a different situation with the ropes on your boat, but alas, it is not.
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