Halyard and Sheet Bags. The Ultimate Design

savageseadog

savageseadog

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Can anyone point me to what they consider to be the best basic design of halyard and sheet bags? All sorts of parameters come to mind:

Material?
Fixing Method?
Where should the mesh be?
Lid or not?
Velcro?

I'm intending to make my own but the devil is in the detail.
 
First, why not look at what is available and see what you like?

Mesh should be at the bottom or perhaps made entirely of mesh; no lid; no velcro.

The purpose is not to protect the sheets and halyards but to keep them tidy.

I also had an extra one for sandwiches, snacks, water, binoculars, HH VHF (not all at once) - just a handy place to put things.
 
A tip I was given by a climber: do not coil the rope neatly before you put it in the bag. If you want it to run out freely, just stuff it in the bag, preferably irregularly and end first
 
My preferred fixing method is good-quality press-studs. That way they can be taken off when the boat's laid up, to help keep them clean. If they do get grubby, they can come off to be washed. The load is at 90º to the studs so there shouldn't be any risk of them falling off accidentally.

I used ones with press-studs on Kindred Spirit; on Ariam my dad got there first and fitted them using screws and penny washers. Guess what, they now look grubby and will be a pain to remove and clean :(

On both boats the pockets were/are freely used for water bottles, packets of biscuits, and other roughly cylindrical items. So I agree with bbg on allowing extra room beyond what's strictly necessary for the lines.

Pete
 
I'd suggest a mesh base for drainage, a batten in the top edge against the bulkhead to keep it straight and no closure. But take a bungee from either corner over a button in the centre of the open side to hold it back, otherwise it is likely to hang open after a while and spill a whole halyard around your ankles at the most inopportune moment!

Rob.
 
I fitted halyard bags home made to my little 21fter a long time ago. We tend to sail it hard requiring a person to sit up on the wide gunwhale. This resulted in crew feet very near the halyard bags and resulted in bags being torn by feet. Perhaps unlikely for you but something to watch out for. I just made a bag from old sail cloth or sail cover cloth. A couple of eyelets in the bottom will let water out though I did not bother. I tapped 4mm threads and put screws nto the bulkhead for fastening. (easy to remove) good luck olewill
 
westhinder said:
A tip I was given by a climber: do not coil the rope neatly before you put it in the bag. If you want it to run out freely, just stuff it in the bag, preferably irregularly and end first
Click to expand...

I used to be a caver, we stuffed ropes into bags that way, we would abseil with the bag hanging off and a knot at the end so you didn't abseil off the end if short
 
savageseadog said:
I'm intending to make my own but the devil is in the detail.
Click to expand...

I think that halyard bags are the work of the devil:)

I prefer belaying hooks, much neater and easier to arrange, depending upon the number of halyards in question.

My bendytoy has a couple of bags. They are held in place with webbing straps in buckles screwed to the grp. They have quite a strong spring arrangements to keep them closed. The bottom is a mesh. Even on my cruiser, there are too many bits of string and even if I take a lot of care to flake the lines into the bag, it always results in a rats nest. Could be operator error, of course ;)

My previous bendytoy had a row of belaying hooks, three or four of them from memory. Much neater and easier to use.

Other detritus usually found in the cockpit is easily stowed elsewhere.
 
davidjackson said:
I think that halyard bags are the work of the devil:)

I prefer belaying hooks, much neater and easier to arrange, depending upon the number of halyards in question.

My bendytoy has a couple of bags. They are held in place with webbing straps in buckles screwed to the grp. They have quite a strong spring arrangements to keep them closed. The bottom is a mesh. Even on my cruiser, there are too many bits of string and even if I take a lot of care to flake the lines into the bag, it always results in a rats nest. Could be operator error, of course ;)

My previous bendytoy had a row of belaying hooks, three or four of them from memory. Much neater and easier to use.

Other detritus usually found in the cockpit is easily stowed elsewhere.
Click to expand...

It's an interesting point of view. The problem is that we have some very long halyards including a doubled 36m/10mm main halyard and it's important we should be able to drop sails quickly when racing.
 
Mine have mesh from half way up the back to the bottom. A piece of bungee is in a channel across the top front & stitched at each corner where the common sense (dzus?) fasteners are. The fronts were made a bit wider at the top so that you pull outwards & bungee stretches to allow opening. Simple & works well. Got them on ebay US 7 yrs ago-made from Sunbrella.

Cheers/ Len
 
savageseadog said:
It's an interesting point of view. The problem is that we have some very long halyards including a doubled 36m/10mm main halyard and it's important we should be able to drop sails quickly when racing.
Click to expand...

Ah. Racing. A subject upon which I'm happy to confirm that I know nothing.

Personally, I'd find it a whole lot quicker to dump the line from within an individual belay hook than try to fish out one halyard tangled with 5 others from within a horrible bag.
 
We have two bags, one on each guardrail by the cockpit. Each has three compartments to take Genoa sheets, Genoa car lines and mooring lines. Made out of acrylic canvas with a batten running along the top edge for stiffness and fixed to the guard rail with large gauge cable ties. The bottom of each compartment has a mesh drain in it, taking up about half the area of the bottom.
SWMBO doesn't yet know it but she has a project to make some more bags for the project boat, which has all the halyards at the mast rather than led back to the cockpit. They'll be a series of individual bags again, one compartment for each line. The idea of putting more than one line into a compartment/bag is just a good way of getting some really high class tangles.
 
The talk about hooks made me realise that although I store the tails of control lines like the kicker and outhaul in the bags, and the short tails of halyard and reefing lines when they're all out (ie sail down, no reefs), when I have the full length of the halyard in the cockpit or the reefs pulled down, I coil them up and hang them from the coachroof winches. Before dropping the sail or shaking out a reef, I pick up the coil and lay it on the cockpit seat ready to run free.

Pete
 
westhinder said:
A tip I was given by a climber: do not coil the rope neatly before you put it in the bag. If you want it to run out freely, just stuff it in the bag, preferably irregularly and end first
Click to expand...
For a few years now I have been flaking my halyards and furling lines into the cockpit bags by winding them in a figure of 8 before stuffing them in; obviously bitter end first. I have never had a tangle doing this and would highly recommend it.
 
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