A job that has been bugging me for a while was the genoa halyard which had been removed from the mast without leaving a mousing line so while the mast is down decided to give it a go on Friday the first attempt was with a spring steel mouse but couldn't get it much more than a metre or two down the mast from whichever way it was entered. The mast is the original Proctor job with a welded head fitting so no chance of removing it and trying from the top a case of back to the drawing board for a plan B. Plan B was to use another halyard to pull a mousing line through the mast and the favourite was the topping lift as the masthead sheave is directly opposite the genoa halyard sheave so the eye end of the topping lift was pulled up to the masthead and secured and I found that by pulling the other end tight I could see the topping lift through the genoa halyard exit only needed a bit of bent wire to hook it out see photograph. This photograph was staged today as I had not got the camera on Friday the already inserted mousing line can be seen.
Topping lift with mousing line attached
I was then only a matter of attaching the end of the mousing line to the topping lift with some sticky tape and carefully pulling on the eye end of the topping lift until the mousing line appeared at the masthead sheave then I passed a long hook through the mast from the genoa halyard sheave and pulled the mousing line through and the job was done only took about five minutes.
Masthead topping lift is on the left
The original halyard was a combined wire and three strand rope so I decided to replace it with a new braid on braid so off to the Kent Boat Jumble yesterday to see George the rope man, I now have 25 metres of 12mm braid on braid just need to splice an eye in the end and pull it in and as they say the jobs a good un.
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