| I currently have a wire/rope halyard which I plan to replace with an all rope one soon. It is the standard setup - comes out the mast and the little ball hooks into the catch. I found that it was difficult at times to get enough tension on the halyard to hoist the sail without killing my hands, so I placed a thru-deck fairlead on top of the grate directly below where the mast exit sheave is located. The cheek block you see below is placed under the fairlead and allows me to lean back and get a lot of pull of the halyard so as to have the metal ball clear the hook before pushing it sideways to stick it in there. This makes hoisting the sail much easier and will also be used when I install my fancy all rope halyard. More on that later. |
