My boat has the old fashion main halyard that has a stop about 24 inches from the end that lays in a hooking device about 18 inches down from the top of the mast. This system is inferior to the kind that uses a steel ring with a twist shackle at the head of the sail but I'm stuck with it. My big gripe is every few years or so the old kind has to be replaced because broken strands will start appearing at the stop whether it be a steel ball, or a copper sleave. My question is this; The loaded part of the halyard is only 2 feet, so why couldn't I replace the entire halyard with quarter inch low stretch line? The "hook" that used to take the stop could be replaced with a clam cleat. The stretch on 2 feet of the right line couldn't be hardly anything and plus the load on it would be static. When the downhaul is pulled tight whatever tiny bit of stretch there is won't change.
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Bill Townsend
G-Cat 5.0
Sarasota
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