There may come a time in your cruise when you need to replace a halyard that’s broken or gotten pulled up through the masthead sheave by mistake. You can’t just get up to the masthead in a bosun’s chair and feed the new halyard over the sheave and down the mast. Obviously, some kind of weight will be required. But often lead fishing weights are to large to fit through a sheave box, so what to do?
The answer is to use a better kind of weight. We carry a 2-3 foot section of bicycle chain for just this purpose. It stores compactly in the “bosun’s stuff” drawer, rolled up in a zip-lock baggie. To use, tie a light messenger line to one end, feed the other end over the masthead sheave and into the mast. Lower the chain with the messenger line until it reaches the base of the mast and can be fished out through the halyard exit box using a bit of coat hanger wire or some such. Untie the chain weight and retie the free end of the messenger line to the end of the halyard, pull on the other end of the messenger line and it’ll pull the halyard up through the exit box, around the masthead sheave and into position. Voila!
(If the halyard’s got an eye splice one the end with a snap shackle or some such to attach to the head of your jib, be sure to reverse these directions … i.e. cut the messenger line from it’s spool and tie the cut end to the halyard tail, then pull the halyard to the masthead outside the mast first and then on down to the exit box. Lest you think I’m being patronizing, I speak here from direct personal experience!)
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Hint for reeving halyards - use a powerful magnet and a magnetic (not stainless) clevis pin to route your pilot line. Aluminum and stainless steel are both minimally magnetic, so the only thing the magnet will grab will be your pin. It was actually sort of fun once we figured it out!
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