88 was a perfect candidate for going lightweight, as the halyards were pretty much the same technical vintage as the boat itself. The spinnaker halyard was a gigantic 1/2" poly halyard, which has the virtues of being stretchy, heavy and slow over sheaves. The main and jib were wire-rope halyards, which always makes me cringe when I see them on a racing boat. Now, wire-rope really has it's uses, cruising rigging (where the wire wears better for extreme long term use) and boats with halyard locks being a few examples. But. 88 is not cruising around the world, and it doesn't have a halyard lock (dammit). In addition, the wire portion of the halyard was really short; on both halyards the wire only went half the length of the mast. Why, I dont know, but this setup combined the worst of both wire and rope. It was heavy, hard on sheaves/mast/gear, and stretchy. The only thing I can possibly say that was good about 88's old rigging was that it lasted, and the shackles weren't too gigantically oversized.
just what you want on a boat, heavy, stretchy, sharp.
What I wanted for 88's new lines, was to be as light and efficient as possible while still being easy to handle, and with a reasonable lifespan. Since rigging is my business, I figured I could go all out and make the perfect halyards, even if they ended up being a bit of overkill.
The main and jib are New England V100 (vectran core), which has been stripped to save weight (and windage on the jib) I wanted to stay light with the shackles, and used Tylaska's P4 polycarbonate spool shackles. To keep the halyards around for a while, I added back cover to the last 5' or so, so that the halyards wouldn't chafe at sheaves and exits, and also so they could be skyed to protect the uncovered portion completely from UV. The spin halyard is New England Endura Braid, stripped and recovered the same way as the other two. It has a stopper ball (the shields has a really odd halyard spectacle that can get jammed with a shackle) and a standard snap shackle with swivel. The topper is Endurabraid as well, 1/4" in size. All the halyards are 5/16". They are extremely low stretch, the small diameter runs very quickly over sheaves and they're quite light.
Lighter, stronger, and dare I say it prettier.
While I had everything out of the mast, I wanted to weigh both sets of halyards, just to see what kind of real world difference I could expect. I expected a couple pounds difference, but was surprised to see that the new gear weighed just more than half! The old halyards weighed 13.5lbs, and the new lines came in at a svelte 7.5. While I'm happy to save 7.5 lbs anywhere, taking that much weight out of the rig is huge. I realized only after uploading the photo that 88's topping lift and downhaul were included in the 7.5 figure, so we probably saved a bit more.
I'm not going to make any performance predictions on this change (ha) but the formula thats generally bandied about is that taking 1lb out of the rig is equivalent to adding 7lbs to keel, in terms of righting moment. Should we ever win a race by 15' or so, I will credit the halyards.
Pull halyards out of mast, run messenger line. 1hr
While there, I took care of a couple more odds and ends. Fitted the underdeck control boxes. They're going to work quite well, once I make a few small mods to get them a) at the right height b)angled up to where the trimmer sits on the windward rail. Also started drilling and routing the holes in the deck, so as soon as it gets a bit warmer I can fill them with epoxy and fair.
Fit Control Boxes/Drill out holes&remove core 2hrs
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