"Bruce" wrote in message
...
snip

Willie, lets be honest. You don't sail in a gale, or near gale,
conditions. You don't sail at all, excepting your recent bay safari,
so your knowledge of gale conditions is limited to whatever book you
are reading this week.

You don't even believe video proof so what am I to do? Pay your air fare so
your fat, skeptical ass can come aboard and see for yourself? But, even that
course of action would likely fail as you would probably get seasick the
instant your back foot stepped onto my fine bluewater yacht.

So the external halyards are slapping all over the place. Which
halyards are those, pray tell? You can't have modified your boat to
run the halyards external to the mast have you? On the other hand, you
may well have, knowing you.

My fine yacht was manufactured in the year of our Lord 1971 AD (or RE as it
is now often called due to political correctness). Back in those days, they
built, long-lasting, trouble-free purist boats. Internal halyards were (and
remain still) anathema to trouble free sailing and easy maintenance.
External halyards are superior in just about every conceivable way over
internal halyards. My halyards are wire rope/double braid line hybrids. When
the sails are topped there is just enough of a length of double braid to
allowed the halyard to be made fast (cleated off). The remainder consists of
wire rope that doesn't stretch and this allows the luffs to remain nice and
straight for better performance to weather.


But, internal or external what halyards are you referring to? You've
got your mainsail halyard that is hooked to either your reefed main or
a storm trysail and you've got your jib halyard hooked to your jib,
whatever kind you have bent on. Both halyards have tension on them and
a tight halyard doesn't flail around.

Yah, right one is going to spend his time tensioning halyards when one's
first priority is to get properly anchored in a crowed anchorage? But, I
guess a dock dweller doesn't anchor so you wouldn't know about this, now
would you?

Duh, more proof of your armchair sailor status. I guess you've never learned
how to anchor under sail, single-handed. If you had you would know that the
halyards of the lowered sails do, indeed, flail around and if there are mast
steps for them wrap around they will wrap around them. If you have any snags
on a sailboat they WILL snag something eventually. Consequently, only a
MORON purposefully installs potential snags. Only a bigger MORON argues
about the efficacy of doing so out of ignorance like you are now doing.

I can tell that you have been reading books again with your stories of
flogging sails and flailing lines....

But what is that is going to require your emergency trip up the mast
in the teeth of a howling gale?


It most certainly won't be to replace an 'internal' halyard that takes a
trip to the yard to unstep the mast unless there happens to be a messenger
line in place which I doubt even you, in your infinite wisdom, (yah right)
have in place. It is a very simple matter to replace an external halyard. As
a matter of fact my spinnaker halyard is so simple to clip onto the fitting
at the masthead that I don't even bother to keep the spinnaker halyard
installed unless and until I decide I'd like to do a nice spinnaker run. Try
that with an internal halyard. LOL!

I know that those sailing books are exciting, especially to the
neophyte, but put the books aside and actually take a trip on the
boat. Even down the bay and back. Maybe you'll learn something.....
maybe.

Reading and then DOING is the key to learning. You've learned nothing
because, although your might read you've been sitting around the docks and
otherwise have been a lubber for 35 some odd years now. So sad!

It is only at anchor when the sails are down and the halyards dangling
there beside the mast that they get all snarled up in the steps.


Wrong. See above. And, you probably have a lubberly roll-up headsail
system
so you KNOW NOTHING about nor are you even able to remove a too-large
headsail and bend on a storm jib, for example when the wind has gotten up.
So the jib halyard snarls up around a bunch of ill-conceived mast steps
and
you can neither get the too large sail down nor bend on the just right
sail.
I can see now why you failed in your circumnavigation, Bruce.


Willie-boy there you go again. Remove a too large headsail.... and I
thought you were a sailor.what in the world are you doing with this
monster headsail up in a storm?

Never heard of reefing as the winds increase so as to have the proper press
of sail for the contitions on hand. One takes a reef or two in the mainsail
via slab reefing on my fine blue water yacht to reef down. One unhanks a
too-large sail and hanks back on a sail suited to the increasing winds. When
doing so, the halyard will be quite slack unless one clips the bitter end to
some deck eye and hauls it tight. But that would be very stupid and
dangerous going back and forth to the cleat. Duh! Instead one lowers the
headsail, then one proceeds to unhank it leaving the halyard attached so it
doesn't carry away. Then one hanks on the smaller sail from bottom to top
and switches the halyard. Then one switches the sheets and then one raises
the headsail and sheets it in. A simple procces tha one should NEVER clutter
up or slow down by making sure the halyard is always taunt.

Learn how to sail, Rube. Loose the wind-ups and you might actually learn
what real sailing is all about.

snipped remainder of clueless and idiotic ramblings of a dock-dwelling
wannabe


Wilbur Hubbard