Halyard maintenance - End for Ending - a trick

After blowing our jib halyard in the opening race I built a new one but then started having nightmares (quite literally!) about the other halyards on the boat, all of the same age, and all with a strange lock(?) knot right in the splice that looks like it was just weakening the line.

So I started "end for ending" the lines. Moving the cover over the stripped and UV damaged core and putting the eye splice on the other end. The first line I did just pushing a foot or two along the rope at a time and it took forever. The second I tied one end to a door handle and stretched the line out, this allowed me to work a couple of yards at a time and the process went much much faster!

First test with my new halyard / rebuilt halyards was okay, sails stayed up. Each halyard has three splices - a locked brummel around a shackle for the eye, a cover bury at the point the core comes out and reaving splice at the loose end to allow a line to be easily attached and pull through. I also added a cover over the main wear point on the jib halyard - again buried back into the core.

Here's the new and bright yellow (most lines on Kraken are blue) jib halyard going up the mast, the others I can just use the existing halyard as a feeder but as the jib had blown I needed to feed again.

At some point I'm going to post a video of the climbing process. I use two ascenders, one to some foot loops and the other to a bosun's chair. I also rig a line to a climbing harness and wrap it around the mast, that way any fall would be checked by the shrouds or spreaders, hopefully before hitting the deck.

To climb you stand up in the loops and pull the chair up, then sit an lift the feet loops. Takes about 10 minutes to get up and down, perhaps less now - with practice!