BC26 halyards rubbing on sprayhood support

[Jonathan Stuart]

Hello,

On our BC26 the halyards rub on the underside of the wooden structure that supports the sprayhood. The noise from the main halyard when raising the mainsail is irritating but we could live with it. However, I'm really concerned about the load from the spinnaker halyard when raising the mast. I worry that something is going to break one day and even if it doesn't then the horrendous noise is really alarming. Here's as short video where you can see the problem and hear the noise made by the main halyard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcCCsfGk0w4

The load / noise from the spinnaker halyard is significantly worse and nearly caused a family meltdown at the weekend when my kids thought something would break and the mast come crashing down. Not what you need when trying to raise an 8m carbon mast!

Does this happen on other BC26s? I am going to fix this but haven't yet decided what to change and would appreciate any feedback.

Jonathan

[Peter Cockerton]

Jonathon

Unfortunate that the fairlead design of the sheets is such that the sprayhood support guides the rope to the clutches. Then as the the rope tension increases the upward force on the sprayhood support increases and the friction noise also increases. Has this always been evident as I know you have had the boat for some time now and the only suggestion if not that I can think of is the natural oils in the wood which would have eased the friction have dried out.

I guess, the worst that could happen is the wood moulding will lift away from deck to a point that the rope entry is aligned with the clutch and as such not be a danger to the lifting of the mast.

Options as I see it are to fairlead the ropes before entry under the wood to stop the friction rub.
Fix a low friction material bar/rod on the underside of the wood.
Fix a small roller on the underside of the wood if sufficient space allows

Peter C

[Michael Rogers]

Jonathan, there are now glues for sticking PTFE (I've written about this on the forum, but I'm no good at using the 'Search' facility to find it for you - sorry!). They work. A strip of fairly chunky PTFE glued on the underside of the wooden spray hood support would eliminate the noise and greatly reduce the friction involving all those running lines.

Michael Rogers (Trouper 12 'Cavatina')

[Nick Orchard]

Hello Jonathan - it's odd that this has only just started happening, it sounds like something has moved. On my boat there's not much clearance between the lines and the underside of the sprayhood support but if they do touch the contact is light and doesn't make any noise. I'm going down to the boat later so I'll take a closer look at the alignment of deck organiser-sprayhood support-clutch and report back later.

To fix the problem I think I would go for increasing the height of the sprayhood support, and this could be done fairly easily by putting shims between either the roof and the feet or between the top of the feet and the top rail.

[Nick Orchard]

Hello again Jonathan - just had a look at my boat and it looks like the main and spinnaker halyards are just touching the underside of the sprayhood bar at the aft side and just clear at the front. There's a slight groove, about 1mm deep, where these halyards touch, but I can't feel any grooves on the other lines, probably because there's much less line movement on them. I don't recall either halyard making much of a noise when hoisting.

I think the simplest fix is to take a half-round file to the underside of the back edge of the sprayhood bar where the rope touches and make the existing groove bigger until the halyard no longer touches. I don't think it will need much taken off to create the necessary relief. If you don't fancy look of the half-moon cuts on the wood the other option would be to file a chamfer all the way across.

[Jonathan Stuart]

Thanks everyone, that's really useful. It always helps to discuss a problem. It sounds like my wooden sprayhood support is lower than Nick's and the halyards rub harder. The problem only started in the second season of sailing and I suspect the increased friction is caused by dirt/salt on the halyards and wood and because they've lost their new slipperiness.

I'll look at how I can reduce the pressure of the halyards on wood and if I can't relieve it enough then will also add something like PTFE. I had tried low friction anti-chafe tape (http://www.protect-tapes.com/products/chafe) but that didn't work, however PTFE should be better.

[Carol Lawson]

 Hi Jonathan
Long time, (We are still thinking about a weekend “Raid” to accommodate families)
But to the point, rub, noise, worry.
Like Nick, (should know it intimately by now, but) will have to check on boat itself. But looking at the video and listening, could it be the winch? This would account for it getting louder on mast haul, as there is more strain. Our halyards rub fractionally on the underneath of that guide strip, but not so that they make a noise or give rise to concern.
When raising the mast the greatest tension is on the eye bolt at the foot of the mast. As it also secures the keel case to the cabin roof, I suspect that the yawning noise of the rope going through the eye, is made worse by the “soundbox” effect of the keel case. We have had the mast up and down frequently with no real worries about the lifting halyard. We replaced the original going up 2mm.
Crosswinds, shrouds catching, using the shrouds to keep it central as it goes up to avoid keyways getting misaligned, remembering to make connections at the top of the mast, getting the Newland pole in the right orientation with the deck u-bolt, Jib/forestay connection to U-bolt on mast, these are a few of my favourite things!
Never worried about the halyard itself- perhaps I will now!
That’s why we need a bit of a get together.
Hope to see you soon
Alistair

[Jonathan Stuart]

Hi Alistair,

Good to hear from you and, yes, an opportunity to sail together would be great. Let me know if you have anything in mind.

As an experiment, last weekend we removed the sprayhood track and re-routed the halyards above the sprayhood support. They slightly press down on the woodwork (which is expected and good news, otherwise the deflection when they run under the wood would be even more than we thought) but the pressure is much less than when they run under the wood. We tightened the spinnaker halyard to slacken the forestay, as if about to de-rig, and the noise didn't occur. I will do more work on this before making any changes but I suspect our halyards rub sufficiently more than on other boats (presumably the wooden support is lower) such that the increased friction makes the noise.

I'm confident the noise isn't coming from the winch. Some lines make a noise at the clutches, e.g. keel lift, but that appears to be because of the angle from the clutch to the winch, i.e. halyards rub on the clutch's built-in fairlead. The spinnaker and main halyards run fairly straight between clutch and winch and don't seem to make a noise at the clutch.

You mentioned the eye bolt. I've never liked that because of the load running through something not designed for a running line, i.e. the friction must be very high. Last month we found the bolt had bent - see attached picture. That was disconcerting! The bend's direction makes me think it was pulled over by the friction of the line. I replaced the bolt with one that has a "collar"/"shoulders" designed to take lateral loads (the standard bolt isn't designed for such loads). It was surprisingly hard to find the right bolt in A4 stainless. If you're interested, the one I fitted is made by Blue Wave, part number BW-371050. That is for an M10 50mm bolt, which is the perfect size. But my paranoia means I have attached a block to that eye bolt and run the halyard through that. It works fine except the pull on the mast's foot is more to port so keeping the mast central when raising is now harder. I may test raising the mast without the block as an experiment.

Having bent that bolt I'm all the more keen to remove unnecessary friction / loads from elsewhere in the process to raise the mast!

[Nick Orchard]

Jonathan - update following a mast lowering/raising session today to do the annual checks and maintenance. First thing I noticed was that my eye bolt is also bent, perhaps not as far as yours but certainly not straight. I don't think it's likely to break any time soon, but I might give some thought to how it could be improved.

Regarding spinnaker halyard noise, not much noise if any on the way down, but plenty of creaking on the way up. I think it was similar to other times that I've raised the mast but it's no more than I'd expect from a heavily loaded line being wound in, like jib sheets being brought in tight in a stiff breeze. What I did notice was a lot of creaking at the winch, as suggested by Alistair, with an intermittent bang/crack sound which could give you more of a fright. On closer inspection as I wound the line in I could see that the bottom turn of rope is right at the bottom end of the cylindrical part of the drum. As you wind more line on, it is forced to feed onto the start of the conical part below, but after about half a drum turn or so, the new bottom turn forces the 3 turns above it to jump up suddenly to make room for the new turn. (I've got Pontos winches like Alistair by the way).  With the load on the winch this does make quite a noise, but again not something that has bothered me.

What did cause me a problem however was the mast foot hinge bracket started to bend off to the left as it approached the top of the keel and I couldn't push it hard enough to the right get it past the plastic strip on the side of the keel. This hasn't happened before and caused a degree of puzzlement until my observant wife asked if the jib halyard was supposed to be so tight. Opening the jib halyard clutch allowed the bracket to spring back to its proper position and normal service was resumed. What had happened was that when the mast was down I had re-rigged the main and jib halyards to take them out of the eyelets on the mast at the spreaders. Having re-reeved them I took the slack out of the lines but no more tension than that. As the mast goes up, the turning blocks at the foot get further away from the clutches and so the line tension increases. The lesson is to make sure that if you do fiddle with the halyards when the mast is down then you need to make sure there's plenty of slack in them before you raise it again.
It's a clever system but, as Alistair says, so many things to keep an eye on simultaneously, there's always something you've forgotten to do or not noticed to catch you out. All back together again now so we'll see if it falls down when I go out tomorrow!

[Peter K]

Hi Jonathan,

Just checked on my halyards/sheets - all of them do catch on the aft of the sprayhood track.  Some worse than others. I hadn’t noticed that before - thanks for pointing it out.

There was a lot of noise/creaking  from the spinnaker halyard or winch  when I raised the mast earlier this month, which did make me twitchy!

Best,

Peter

[Jonathan Stuart]

Thanks Peter, that's interesting. As an experiment I re-routed the main halyard over the woodwork (having removed the sprayhood track). It now presses down on the wood but by far less than when routed underneath. I have to confess the noise still occurs when using the winch but when I raised the sail by hand there was no noise...so it looks as if the winch is a significant source of the noise but I will now route the halyard below the wood to see if that adds to the noise. My wife normally raises the sail and needs the winch for most of the process, which is why the noise became so noticeable.

However, I am sure the spinnaker halyard's rubbing on the wood adds to the creaking / noise when raising the mast although based on my experience with the main halyard I am equally sure the noise of halyard-on-winch is also significant. I have also temporarily re-routed the spinnaker halyard over the wood work but not had the opportunity to use it like that while raising the mast. I can't leave the halyards like this otherwise we can't use the sprayhood without modifications! However, I am now thinking that I may cut the port sprayhood track such that it can be swung out of the way when raising / lowering the mast and I re-route the spinnaker halyard over the wood just for that action. Any reduction in creaking during raising / lowering would be welcome and it must be a good thing to reduce the load on the wood. I also still plan to experiment with some low-friction material under the wood to see if that makes a difference.