Great day for sailing---nice 15 knot breeze---and in the process of raising the mainsail, the halyard snaps right at the metal stop. Is it possible to
get by
using a nylon rope halyard?
it depends on the circumstances really.
If you're on a small, light-air lake and not racing, something could be
rigged.
If any of those criteria fail, then probably not <img src=
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Since the halyard doesn't support any load while sailing (most catamarans), it wouldn't matter if you rigged it with 20 runs of dental floss or went without the halyard alltogether. I've rigged the mainsail on a boat with a broken halyard by tipping the boat over on land and manually pulling up the sail to the mast hook. Same thing for dropping the sail.
I tried raising a main with a
stretchy
halyard once. It was such a pita, it was easier to just knock the boat over.
I guess that you are on a Hobie16/prindle 16 type halyard system where the last bit of the wire does take all the load.
Use a bit of nylon to hoists the sail and then turn the boat over and tie the top of the sail to the hole through the top of the mast with a short piece of dyneema or D12 type rope. This will take all the sailing load.
you will see sailors doing this at an important race even with new halyards in place, just in case it should break.
you will need to turn the boat over to release the sail for lowering.