New rope! Errrr, lines!

When The Ripple first came into my life, a lot of the running rigging (aka the ropes*) looked like it could very well be original (i.e. 30+ years old).

*Every time I would call something a rope, my grandfather would correct me, saying that there was no such thing as "rope" on a sailboat because every "line" has a proper name. Sorry grandpa!

So for one of the first purchases, I decided to buy a 600 ft. spool of 3/8th rope line. Well, on Thursday of last week, this arrived at my apartment.

That's a lotta line...

So on Saturday afternoon, my buddy Matt met me at the marina, and we dove into it. The goal was to replace the main sheet, both genoa sheets, the main halyard and the genoa halyard. 

I also need to replace my genoa furler brake line, but I need to learn to end-to-end splice before I can do that... another day!

We decided to start with the sheets first, as they seemed the simplest. Take the old ones down, measure them out, cut new ones, and put them back up. How hard to could it be?!

Diving in

Well, turns out it's just about that easy, thanks in part to the rope cutting gun I decided to buy along with my spool. Nicknamed "The Panther", that thing is incredibly satisfying to use. Heats up in about 5 seconds, and cuts through nylon rope like butter. Definitely made the whole process move along a lot quicker!

The Panther

With the sheets out of the way, we moved onto the halyards...

Now, for those that aren't up on their nautical terms, a halyard is the the line you use to hoist a sail up the mast. My boat has two of them, one for the main sail and another for the genoa. The tricky part about replacing them is, well, they run through the mast, to the top, and around a pulley wheel... where you can't reach it.

My old halyards, waaaaaay up there.

So, in order to replace them, you have to attach your new line to the end of the old one, and then pull them through the mast. What makes it nerve racking is, if the end-to-end attachment comes apart while the line is up the mast, you can't reach it to pull the old one back down to try again. Essentially, you're hooped. Things to be avoided...

In order to "avoid this", I decided to WAYYYY over do the end-to-end attachment, which I did with sailing twine. After stabbing myself in the finger with my needle on the very first stitch, I ended up with this. 

When in doubt, over do it... Not sure I could have quite hung from that, but I'm pretty sure I could have.

Anyway, after the attachment was all done, I said a few prayers, swallowed the butterflies in my stomach and pulled the halyard through without issue. Easy mode. The genoa halyard went even smoother, with a few less butterflies. It was almost like we knew what we were doing!

The cockpit immediately looks so much better with the old ratty lines gone and the new shiny ones looking all pretty. I also took my friend Charlotte's great advise and cut some of the old lines into new dock lines. Waste not want not!

Lookin' good!

The learning continues...