We had been considering chafe and age of the jib and spinnaker halyards. We explored options but ultimately the cost of new line was not attractive so I decided to use the leftover of my Robline Admiral 10,000 Plus spool, which cost me about $2.7/foot a few years ago. So Sunday I went to work: I got to the boat at 10:30 and left at 19:30, not taking time for much of a break. I’m so slow!
My first observation is that I think that the chafe on the jib halyard was inside the mast, about 117 inches below the sheave. It seemed to coincide with the exit point of the staysail sheave. I think what was happening was these two halyards were chafing on each other inside the mast. I’m not sure though, so additional monitoring will be required.
My second observation was that with the leftover from the spool, I didn’t have enough to cut both a jib and a spinnaker halyard. The good thing is that when I cut the staysail halyard from the spool I made it just long enough to work as a jib halyard. So I swapped the staysail halyard for the jib. Then I cut a spinnaker halyard, and the leftover was used for the staysail. I had to do splices, reeving ends, and stitched whippings, which added to the time used.
I’m very much considering reeving lines for the staysail, jib, and spinnaker halyards to reduce UV exposure. It’d be additional work to prep and put away the boat, but maybe the cost savings are worth it. All right, to the calculator! Say these 3 halyards cost me about half of the spool so $900. I’m thinking this would add about 20 minutes before and after a sail, so 40 minutes. Say we go out about 30 times a year, that would be 20 hours of work per year. Say the lines would need to be replaced every 3 years otherwise and we can add 3 years to the line by doing this, we would be saving $450 on the lifetime of the halyards. Since we added 3 years * 30 outings * 40 minutes = 60 hours of labor, the labor cost is about $450 / 60 = $7.5. Right, I can make more money by using this time in other places, so I think I’m going to skip on this.
