Deck repair and halyard replacement

[Phill S]

Having bought an OK at the end of last year I have now found time to ‘clean’ it up before I hit the water.

The boat has a wooden deck which I have been told has been coated in a clear epoxy rather than varnish.
Most of the deck looks ok, but in places the epoxy is starting to form ridges and looks like its starting to crack/lift off.

Being new to this, i’m lookng for advice on the best way to patch up the epoxy where needed. Do I need to strip large areas back to the ply or can I rub down small areas and apply new epoxy over the top?

I’m also intending to replace the worn halyard. The current set up has a ‘hook’ at the top of the mast under which at the moment a knot sits to hold up the sail. If I buy a new piece of string I don’t really want to start putting knots in it, is there a better method of locking off the halyard or using this hook without knoting the halyard?

Any advice greatly received.

Phill

[X]

Hi Phill,

If the deck has been epoxied, dont try & strip it back completely, you may end up destroying the top veneer.
Just go back to wood where the bad areas are then sand it & re-epoxy. You will need to put varnish over the top to ensure it is protected from the UV otherwise it will go white in the sunlight.

For the halyard a mast head claw is pretty standard.
Most people use a wire strop because it lasts longer, but if you take all the sharp edges off the claw witha small file a knot wil last half a season. When you but a new halyard get something that doesn’t stretch & get an extra metre or so to allow it to be trimmed when it does wear.

Hope to se you out & about.

Terry

[RB]

Hi Terry,

Just picking up on you last comment regarding halyards you talk about a mast head claw, what is this? Not that it is an issue as the halyard on my oldish red top needlespar is a 4mm line run up inside the mast exiting on a sheave at the head, the tail exits on the front of the mast onto a cam cleat, and works perfectly well but worried now I might be missing something!

Thanks

Richard

[davecooper]

Hi RB
Yeah, these halyard locks have been around in the class forever. The advantages are that you get a consistent hoist up to the black band and the only bit of the halyard that’s loaded is the 3-400mm from the sail headboard to the halyard lock: the rest of the halyard can be as light and flimsy as you like, all it does is pull the sail up and release it from the lock to lower the sail. The other advantage there used to be in wooden mast days was, that it halved the compression strain on the mast: compression fractures were quite a serious problem for wooden masts.
The way it works is that the halyard ends with about 400mm of wire with a swage on it: there’s a hooky -type thing on the front of the mast that captures the swage when the sail’s right up. Bloody hard to describe! Here’s http://www.seldenmast.co.uk/fittings/content.asp?Category_ID=2 a description on Selden’s page. I’ll take a photo of mine and stick it on here later.
Looking at ‘halyard locks’ on google, it seems quite a lot of people see them as being a new device which is strange: 40 years on oks and I bet we borrowed the idea from finns!

Dave

[Richard]

Hi, just to bring this topic back up, are wire halyards still the preferred option or do people prefer to use a short rope halyard instead now?

Just thinking that unlike the old days when kevlar was the norm & you had to get meters of the stuff (@ a cost) because it didn’t splice like some of the modern better equivalents. You can now easily splice a better equivalent & then just buy a cheap rope tail like you would with a wire halyard. Also means you can be a little less accurate in what you get made, ‘cos you only need to tie knots rather than get the ferrel in the right place & remeber a shackle length with a retaining pin to ensure that hit the blackband & don’t go over it.

It would be useful to know as I’m finally putting my boat back together!

[davecooper]

old days when Kevlar was the norm

Can’t be the same old days I remember – Kevlar wasn’t invented then.
Yeah, why not a piece of smart string? Just as strong as wire and lighter. You know they are using that stuff for standing rigging on racing yachts now?
Dave

[Richard]

By olden days, I am obviously referring to goldenage of the mid to late ’90’s!! A time before proper jobs, mortgage, family, etc. A time when I would have actually known what the latest stuff on the market was called, a time (can u believe it) before the internet & useful forums like this were everywhere & you would have had to pock up the phone to ask someone how to do it, get to an open & spend the first day rebuilding your boat or wait until the Dinghy Exhibition to ask someone! Let’s hope that the local chandlery does a splicing service. If not it will be wire. Surprised you don’t go down the rope option to avoid to avoid damaging carbon masts !

[davecooper]

Me too! The mast has been using this strop ever since it was a Finn mast! I guess when it eventually breaks I’ll use a bit of dyneema or whatever.
Dave
(If this mast is typical, ‘damaging carbon masts’ isn’t an easy thing to do: the sheave is quite well designed and the rest of it is fantastically strong)

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