Best halyard material

cameronke

cameronke

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I wonder if anyone would advise me on the most reliable halyard material.

Though I am a keen sailor, the particular purpose of this request is for a huge flag halyard. It is in a very prominent and precarious position and will be raised lowered at least once a day. In the past, the halyard was steel cable but this has broken.

What would be the best material?

Thanks in anticipation

Cameron
 
If this is for a flagpole, then braid on braid is your best option. Dyneema is total overkill as you do not need the lack of stretch that costs so much. Even a very large flag will not put a huge breaking strain on a rope, so you won't need a big diameter. If you had wire rope before, then the blocks are probably narrow. You need to investigate to see what will fit.
 
I would suggest polyester rope, if the pulley at the top will cope with say 5mm dia line. This should have adequate breaking strain and UV resistance. The bigger the better for ease of handling etc, but you may be restricted by fittings made for smaller wire rope.
The above assumes your huge flag is not that huge, say 2m x 3m? Bigger than that I would scale the rope up a bit, not so much from strength, but to avoid rope burns when trying to hoist in force 6 or whatever!
You say 'most reliable' imho, rope is reliable until something chafes it, or it is very highly loaded for its size, or it is done in by UV.
For my racing dinghy, an inch of stretch is almost unacceptable in a 20ft 4mm halyard, which is tensioned by a 16:1 downhaul on the sail. So we use kevlar or spectra line. But the kevlar will break where it has a point stress after a season or so. You shouldn't have these issues, no one will think your flag is at half mast if it drops an inch, and its only being tensioned by hand, so the high tech fibres aren't needed.
If the fitting at the masthead is for small wire, a decent chandler will make you a new halyard to length very reasonably in flexible stainless wire, with a rope tail to use on a cleat. You can get 2,3 or 4mm flexible wire rope one made easily, you may need a soft eye one end so you can get it through the pulley.
Does that help?
 
Why not stick with metal and use 7x19 S/S wire, will fit the blocks, no chafe, very strong. You just need either a wire winch at the bottem or a splice to braid for the bit you pull.
 
A good reason for using dynema over braid on braid is that you can get away with a smaller diameter as it is stronger. which may help with any block size problems.
 
Thank you all very much for your suggestions. I am run off my feet at the moment but will take more time nearer the weekend to consider them all.

The flag in question is the main flag above Edinburgh Castle so they dont come much bigger!

regards
Cameron
 
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