sjw98
Hi everyone,
I don’t know whether this is a stupid question but anyway… we’ve had our sonata for about a year now, and the main and genoa halyards could do with replacing; is it necessary to replace with wire&rope or, given today’s modern technology, could they be replaced with a nice single length of, say, dyneema?
Any thoughts/comments would be really appreciated.
Best regards,
Steve
StevenRolland
We replaced out jib halyard with 8mm Dyneema last year. It hasn’t been too bad but it does suffer from some creep*, and we find we have to adjust the halyard tension on long legs as the rope lengthens. It would definatly be okay for a main halyard. The 6mm Martin suggested will be strong enough, but we went for eight to save our middle man’s delicate hands. I would probably go for 6mm if I was buying another one.
Ideally you would strip the top part of the halyard of the outer braid to save weight, but it means you would have to pull the halyards inside the mast when leaving the boat to protect the Dyneema from UV. We havn’t bothered.
* I can’t remember the correct term for this, I’m refering to elastic rather than permenent deformation
martin hartley
Replace your halyards with 6mm Spectra or Dyneema (or any very low stretch rope). There is no need to use wire for this application any more. This is also good for the spinny halyard.