This was part of my project on my boat today. This is a new jib halyard made from the rope that I bought yesterday in Seattle. A jib halyard is a line that runs up the mast, over a sheave and back down. It is used for raising the jib(the forward sail on a sloop). Anyway, we broke the jib halyard last April. The actual cause of it breaking remains a mystery, but since it broke in the splice near the end, I was able to shorten and resplice it. It worked fine until I could replace it. I tried to buy new line, but it was "always on order" until yesterday.
This line is of double braid construction and is what is referred to as "core dependent". It has a braided core of Vectran material that carries the load(core dependent) and an outer cover of polyester to protect the line and give it the diameter and finish to be able to pull and winch on it. It is immensly strong. It started out 110 feet long. I removed 41 feet of the cover where it was not needed and tucked a foot and a half of cover inside the core where the transition occurs. I then spliced an eye in the end of the "stripped" core to attach the snap shackle. The other end of the halyard also recieved an eye, but it was the end of the cover tucked inside itself and sewn to provide a light duty eye for pulling the halyard into the mast with the old halyard. OK, so now you know how I got it run up the inside of the mast, over the sheave and back down to the deck. I also prepared and installed a similar halyard for the mainsail. Each one took me an hour each. Tommorow I have two more lines to splice. These are control lines for the check stays(rigging that controls the bend of the mast). I have not decided if I want to strip the cover off or just put an eye splice in each one.
I have always enjoyed working with line and splicing. 40 years ago my dad and I built a 15 foot sloop. I wanted to use Samson double braid running rigging. Both my dad and I knew how to splice 3 strand. Some how I learned to perform the double braid splice. Since then I have always done my own rigging and splicing on all my boats. Making all rope halyards is easy. I used to use wire rope on my previous boats and I spliced the double braid rope into the wire rope. That was a lot of work!
Well, that was one item off the boat "to do" list. Many more to go!
Good looking splices. Will the eye ends pass thru the mast openings and turning blocks easily?
ReplyDeleteYes, they pass thru very easily. I tied the eye from the old halyard to the eye splice on the new halyard with a short section of seine twine and pulled the new one through. Magic!
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