Not my boat, belongs to a buddy, helping him sort a few things out. In my rather limited experience, main halyard hooks tend to be a single piece of bent metal attached to one side of the mast, and thus slightly biased in one direction. This boat's hook appears to be more in the style of the boom end of a vang, attached on both sides of the mast and centered right over the slot, and that's making it hard to detach the halyard ring from. This seems to be aggravated by the halyard ring/shackle being homemade. (There's a real problem with the (actual) farmers who populate the prairie club where this boat lives - they seem to suffer from a severe case of NIH and like to invent "creative" new ways to do things, apparently out of a perceived obligation to DIY in order to prove their farmerliness, I guess. You wouldn't believe the "righting system" one of them devised for a Nacra F17 - beautifully fabricated, but it's gotta weigh 50 lbs. if it weighs an ounce.)

So the question is: Which style of off-the-shelf ring/shackle works best with this boat, and what's the technique for unhooking it?



Edited by jonathan162 on Jul 14, 2021 - 05:27 PM.

--
Southern Alberta and all over the damn place.
*
1981 SuperCat 20 "Roberts' Rockets"
1983 SuperCat 19
TriFoiler #23 "Unfair Advantage"
Mystere 17
Unicorn A-Class (probably made by Trowbridge) that I couldn't resist rescuing at auction.
H18 & Zygal (classic) Tornado - stolen and destroyed - very unpleasant story.
Invitation and Mistral and Sunflower and windsurfers w/ Harken hydrofoils and god knows what else...
--

I had the same problem with my Nacra 500. I went to a smaller ring. It did not have an eye to tie the halyard so I just tied to the ring and after about a year the hook wears the halyard at the knot, just take off two inches and re-tie. Tie the ring with just one half hitch but use a square knot right at the end of the line to keep it from slipping. This is the smallest knot possible and will insure the ring is as near to the top as possible. Use a twist shackle to attach the ring to the head of the sail, this will assure proper alignment. Turn the mast 90 degrees, raise a couple of inches and pull and pull down. If you can't turn the mast 90 degrees the rig may be too tight. If you still have problems, pull the boat on it's side, put the ring in the hook, create considerable downward pressure to simulate the sail being in there and then you will be able to see why it won't release easily.

--
Bill Townsend
G-Cat 5.0
Sarasota
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So you had better results by using a separate ring and twist shackle rather than a welded pair like the "legacy Nacra" one shown here?

https://www.murrays.com/s…alyard%20ring&page_num=2

Although the photos aren't to scale, the Nacra one certainly looks a lot smaller than the Hobie.



Edited by jonathan162 on Jul 14, 2021 - 01:31 PM.

--
Southern Alberta and all over the damn place.
*
1981 SuperCat 20 "Roberts' Rockets"
1983 SuperCat 19
TriFoiler #23 "Unfair Advantage"
Mystere 17
Unicorn A-Class (probably made by Trowbridge) that I couldn't resist rescuing at auction.
H18 & Zygal (classic) Tornado - stolen and destroyed - very unpleasant story.
Invitation and Mistral and Sunflower and windsurfers w/ Harken hydrofoils and god knows what else...
--

I just happened to have a smaller ring than the factory one and a twist shackle. I was thinking about ordering that one from Murrays but decided it would be a waste of money because the smaller ring worked fine. Before I did it, I did lay the boat on it's side and it seemed to me that with the large ring it was much harder to turn the mast enough to get the ring to clear the hook.

--
Bill Townsend
G-Cat 5.0
Sarasota
--

I don’t have experience with the hook you describe but i’ve tried the welded and the separate
ring and shackle and i don’t see a reason why the non-welded would work better. There are more issues related to how you tie it, typically a stopper knot pointing towards the mast track (allthough that affects more on locking than unlocking the hook i think). A non-stretching halyard helps a lot and an easy rig tool too. In my case i struggled a long time thinking that i wasnt pulling enough to move the hook up, but what really happened is that i wasn’t pulling the sail down enough before releasing mast rotation. Since then it has become much easier, even on the water. As said above, trying to figure out what happens is very important.



Edited by Andinista on Jul 18, 2021 - 10:48 AM.

What also helps is a mast rotator, adding one just for that purpose isn’t a crazy idea in my opinion.

I've spent a TON of time on the I-20, but don't remember how the main halyard was setup.... I swear that we used a welded ring/shackle.

Two things, first, how is your line tied to the ring? If you have the line run through with a stopper knot on one side, it matters if the knot is towards or away from the mast.

Second, you have to make sure the mast rotates to 90 degrees to get it to unlock; if it doesn't go on one side, try it going the other way. It will depend on your angle to the wind.

Also, the owners manual shows a ring and twist shackle for what it's worth.

https://nacrasailing.com/…-i-20-manuals.pdf?x42148