'External' Halyards

[pcatterall]

I discover that my 'new' boats mast has no hole for the halyards so they the must just run over the fore and aft pulleys ( of which there are two sets) I guess that the system will be one for the main, and one for the boom jib ( with a bit of fiddling I can use this to raise the furling gennoa at start of season).
The topping lift I guess will just go onto a block attached to the top of mast.
Is it worth ( possible even!) making holes in the mast to feed the halyards through ( it looks like the pulleys are positioned to facillitate this) ?
Yacht is a Neptunian 33.

 

[earlybird]

I would stick with external halyards, they are perfectly functional and avoid mods to the mast and the hassle of reeving them. Internal halyards have no real benefit apart from neater appearance and minimally less windage.
When you lose a halyard, you will be glad if it's external.

 

[Kelpie]

The halyards on our Vega are external and it works fine. Makes raising the main dead easy as you can give it a really good haul downards, and sweat it up for tension.

 

[William_H]

Halyards

I imagine it is the head fitting of the mast that has 4 pulleys 2 at the front and 2 behind. This on a mast head rig. This is the usual arrangement for internal halyards where you have 2 halyards forward and 2 aft.
If it were me and the mast is down I would be running them internally if only to give you the number of halyards you might want. ie main halyard and topping lift and jib halyard and spin halyard or 2 jib halyards.
Of course you may only want one main halyard and a jib halyard. Sorry i don't know what a " boom jib is" unless you have a self tacking jib on a boom.

Anyway the halyards are IMHO best brought out of the mast by a slot hole typically about 1 to 1.5 metres above the deck. They angle out to a turning block attached to the deck or mast base. The slot is made by drilling a suitable sized hole ie 12mm in the side of the mast then when the drill is through move the drill handle down to produce a hole/slot with some angle outwards at the bottom. I then have put a piece of steel rod of similar size into the hole and bashed with a hammer to dent the bottom of the hole in top out.
Finally as necessary make it into a slot with a round file.
You may find as I did that wire halyard will cut the aluminium at the top of the hole. I riveted a small piece of stainless steel across the top of the hole to take the wear. This is what I have done with my 27ft mast on 21ft boat.

Position all 4 holes at different levels above the deck 2 each side but not above one another. ie have a big gap between holes to avoid a weak point in the mast.
An exit slot up higher can be used to help the halyard by pulling down at the mast. One class of racing boat at our club raise the spin this way. They have a clutch mounted on the mast. After spin is up the halyard is taken up to the cockpit and the clutch opened for quick drop. I put my spin halyard too low and regret it as you can get a lot of speed and power out of pulling halyard down at the mast.

Some boats have exit blocks at the base of the mast however i think this is too complex and adds as much friction as a slot exit. good luck olewill

 

[Robin]

Another advantage of internal halyards is that it halves the number of sources or noise from them clanging against the mast.

When we had a W33 and had the mast down to re-rig, we put all the halyards internally, much neater, more halyards possible and as I mentioned less noise. In our case our friendly local rigger marked where to cut the holes and I did the cutting and filing smooth, he later dropped by and riveted (big riveter) the new exit plates in place in the cut holes. William_H says where to place the exits and it certainly pays to have them placed so you can pull down by hand for speedy hoisting. I had removed the mast base fitting which allowed easy vision of the inside and used the old rigging wire as a mouse to thread down and pull the halyards through, hooking them at the appropriate exit. We also took the opportunity to re-run and masthead cables like for the VHF and wind instruments through the mast conduit where the tricolour & steaming light wiring was. Peace glorious peace, no more tapping when rolling at anchor!