Halyard Knot

How to tie a Halyard Knot

I had to replace my halyards on our day sailor this year. What I thought would be a quick and easy job was a ½ day project. The original lines that came off had the hardware spliced on the ends.

I bought an extra 6’ of line for both halyards so I could splice the ends. Splicing is a skill that takes doing it regularly or often to get good at. That’s why I got the extra line. I started with a piece of scrap line, got the directions and the tools out and tried it. I gave up on my first try after about 10 minutes.

After a cup of coffee and some encouragement from the dog and cats I tried again on the other end of the scrap of line. The dog thought it was great…He must have thought I was making him a pull toy.  My second attempt was marginally better than the first. On a scale of one to ten, my first try was a 1, and my second try was a 1.25.

My wife said I should try on a piece of new line…it is more slippery and that may be easier to do. With a last comment, she said, my first two tries was as good as she had ever gotten, and that her X was the one that could splice lines, but had left her the tools.

I thought that using new line could really make a difference being more slippery; since where I had my problem was getting the line to slip into itself. I tried a piece of new line. It was more slippery but it was also stiffer. My next two tries rated a 1.75 and maybe a 1.85 with 10 being perfect. Now the dog had two pull toys.

I got out another book that had splicing instructions and how to tie knots in it and tried the instructions on splicing from it. The result was a splice that I would rate at a 2.1. At this rate I figured I would need to buy an extra 60’ of line to practice on. I had thoughts of asking my Wife’s X if he could help, but that was only a thought I let blow away in the wind. If he could do it, I should be able to do it. 8-)

I went back to the book. In the index was: How to tie a Halyard knot.

The sun came out, the birds started to sing, and I knew I could tie this knot: 8-) 8-) *-) *-) 8-) Yes!

Here is a Picture of how to do a halyard knot. 

Now we can go sailing again. And maybe I will get some extra rope for Christmas to practice splicing with . 8-)  

Schooner Lines

Schooner Lines...they need to be different colors!

When we built our schooner I had no idea it would require as many yards of rope or line as it did to get her rigged. I made a guess estimations, added 20% and choked. Then when I got to the Chandlery I choked when I found that the cost of line had gone up about 20% since I had last bought line.

My original Idea was to color code each major line, so it would be easy to know what line was what. When I did a quick calculation I found that it was not cost effective to do that. The price per foot of the line was higher than if I bought a full spool of line. The spool had more line than I thought I would need, but I figured I would use it. I did use it, plus more when it was all said and done.

In hind sight I should have bought 2 spools, each of a different color. The original idea of different color lines was a good one. Rigging the boat with all the same line made it more difficult to sail. We quickly learned that we had to tie the same line to the same cleat each time. The cleat became the key to knowing what line you had. We also learned that we needed to coil and store each line in the same place once under way for the same reason. If the lines got mixed and messed getting the sails down became a big problem.

The main has two halyards, a topping lift, and a sheet line, and it is the same for the fore sail. The jib has a halyard, two sheet lines, and a line that goes to the front of the boom on the bottom of the jib to the tip of the bow. 

In addition to those lines you have a painter, port and starboard dock lines and an anchor line. We leave the spring lines at the dock. Oh, there are lines for the bumpers and a few extra lines that are for unexpected events. 8-)

Each line needs the ends of the line whipped. That is a day’s work in itself but it is time well spent. It also looks sharp and prevents the line from unraveling. It also makes threading the lines through blocks much easier. Splicing a loop in the end of a line also can make life easier. It is well worth learning how to do basic line splicing. I have not mastered splicing a loop on the end of a line yet. I think 1 out of 6 looks nice and you have to be lenient on what you think looks nice. 8-)  A whipped end works better for me. 

For a 28’ boat there are 22 cleats, and each have a use. At times I wish there were a few more cleats; you always need one where there is none.

I have to replace some lines on another boat this year. I will get a different color line for it and see if I can mix and match lines between the boats. It is nice to set things up so I do not have to think as hard when line handling. I learned the hard way that spending the extra money on different color lines would have been a great saving in frustration.