North American Fireball Message Board: Re: wire cable vs vectran (or spectra) for halyards

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Re: wire cable vs vectran (or spectra) for halyards

Posted by dwhite on 1/28/2008, 7:20 am, in reply to "Re: wire cable vs vectran (or spectra) for halyards"
72.237.90.68

I like what most people have gone to. They don'y have a luff wire in their jib instead the luff wire is replaced with a piece of vectran or similar product that also is the halyard. The jib is connected to the halyard by a series of tabs that wrap around the vectran and are held by velcro. The rig tension is controled by the halyard but the jib floats on the halyard and you control the hieght of the jib with an auxilery jib halyard and the jib cunnignham. Some use the halyard as the forestay but I have problems with the rules on that one but it is a common set up. It's very clean and extremely efficent. The problem I have with wire jib luffs is that eventually they twist and when you put tension on the jib halyard the top of jib twists. This system gets rid of that problem. On my boat we don't have an actual jib halyard as the jib is attached to the mast before you step it with a J hook where the halyard pulley would be. The vectran runs through the jib like a luff wire but the jib still floats on the vectran and on the deck the end of the vectran connects to a 16-1 pulley arrabgement for rig tension. There is a small micro pulley tied to the J hook and a small line ties to the top of the jib and about a foot below the pulley it enters the mast and exits at the deck level and that's how I control raising or lowering the jib when I rake my mast. The problem with this set up is I can not remove my jib without either unstepping the mast or rolling the boat over at shore. This hasn't been a problem as most of the time I justy wrap the jib around the forestay when the boat is on shore.

--Previous Message--
: Thanks for that! Lots of good info
: there. One question I still have -
: If the luff wire on the jib is wire
: cable, can I still replace the
: halyard with Vectran? Or would it
: be recommended to stay with the
: cable for the halyard unless I also
: replace the luff wire with Vectran?
:
: --Previous Message--
: Go to the Fireball homepage and look
: in the Tech Articles. The previous
: discussions on the board were
: captured there. Look at
: "rigging - main"
:
: --Previous Message--
: I currently have cables running
: inside
: the mast for both the jib and main
: halyards. On both, the loop at the
: cable end doesn't have a thimble and
: the wire is sawing through the loop
: in the end of the rope part of the
: halyard where they join. I can
: replace just the rope and leave the
: cable inside the mast. Also
: considering replacing both with just
: all high tech line (spectra or
: vectran) for both systems - main and
: jib. (Or high tech line inside the
: mast spliced to something a bit
: easier on the hands for the part
: outside the mast.)
: The advantages I see to an all rope
: system is that it would eliminate
: the current problem occurring again,
: it's lighter, the cable is wearing
: the slot in the mast and rope
: wouldn't. The disadvantages would
: be the rope stretches more (but I
: have been told this is minimal) and
: the initial cost of replacing the
: whole system.
: Thoughts anyone? Thought I saw a
: discussion on this before but can't
: find anything now.
: Thanks,
: Debra
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