Spinnaker Halyard Attachment

While I had my Tornado mast down yesterday I inspected the spinnaker halyard fittings. There is an eyelet rivetted about 1m above the shroud attachment point. From this eyelet, a leader line runs down about halfway to the shroud point, then passes under a short bit of Amsteel line and ends at the spin. halyard block. The Amsteel line wraps across the leading edge of the mast and through a hole on each side towards the trailing edge.



The holes are in the "sealed" section of the mast, not the sailtrack, so loads of sealant were on the line knots to attempt to keep things watertight. Due to chafing where the halyard block attaches, the line needed replacing, so I removed it.

What is the purpose of the leader line down from the eyelet and the amsteel line? Is it to distribute loads into a compression loading along the mast section between the eyelet & Amsteel points? If not, why not just put the eyelet where the Amsteel is located and fix the halyard block right there?

Given the problems trying to seal line to the mast holes, is there a better solution for the Amsteel line? I'm thinking rivetting small eyelets in place to attach the line to.

Mike.

Are you sure the short Amsteel lines aren't wrapping up in the top of the little block? Causes the chafing on the sharp sides of your flat stamped shackle? I had this happen once and the block twisted up the spin halyard too. Guess how much fun THAT was getting down before the end of the lake.

The idea behind that spinnaker halyard rigging is that your mast is freely allowed to rotate even with the spinnaker up because your halyard pully slides around the side on the piece of Amsteel. On my 6.0, I have a tang (eyelet) from which my spin halyard pulley is mounted directly to like you are asking about. It certainly works but with the spinnaker up I have to induce positive rotation in the mast (you probably only have a rotation limiter). This setup you have, while requiring some maintenance, is superior. Those that I have seen like yours, however, have the piece of Amsteel drilled through into the luff track instead of internally in the mast making replacement much easier. There is usually enough room for a small knot behind the bolt rope of the sail.

The Inters and Tigers have a fixed sheave in the center of mast but have a bail several inches below the sheave that matches the curvature of the mast. (This is really hard to describe without a picture). The halyard runs under this 'bail' to the sheave and back down through the bail to the head of the spinnaker. The spinnaker can only hoist up to the bail because of a stopper ball but is allowed to rotate around the side of the mast. It accomplishes the same thing that you have but without the wear items.

Mike,

Try this area of Wouter's web site...he has a lot of good information there about different spinnaker halyard attachments. I remember there were some load calculations that prescribed the method you have as well...download the word document too.

http://www.geocities.com/kustzeilen/Genaker/

Hi,
Would it be possible to somehow press an aluminum sleve (tubing) into the hole through your mast? If you could seal the sleve to the mast with epoxy, 3M 5200 or whatever would work best, then you wouldn't have to worry about sealing the line where it passes through.

Jack

Tornado,

I can't help you with your current problem with the Amsteel line in the mast. Unless you just seal those holes up and go into the mast track.

To comment on Jakes comment, about drilling "through into the luff track instead of internally in the mast making replacement much easier. There is usually enough room for a small knot behind the bolt rope of the sail." I agree, but I instead drilled 4 holes, 2 on each side, one above the other. The line is fed in one hole on each side, then fed out the other hole on that side and tied off outside. This allows the lines to sit in the corner of the mast grove and to be tied off without interfering with sail or main halyard that are in the groove.

I also concure with Jake to check out Wouters guide. It has a lot of good info and I used some when I re-did my spinnaker halyard.

I have a few photos of my setup at nacramania.com

(Note in the photo below an old haylard tang is still present. I did not remove it because it does not seem to get in the way and I wanted to keep the mast well sealed.)