Halyard installation

[Brion Toss]

Hello,
A local Swan owner came up with an ingenious "shuttle", a piece of plywood cut to fit snugly inside his mast, so that with all the fasteners removed he could use a messenger, on both sides, to slide it the entire length of the mast. So he took the masthead sheaves out to give him some room, slid the shuttle up to the top, and tied messengers to the appropritate corners of the shuttle, and slid it back down. The shuttle kept the halyards from tangling en route, and he just fished them out of their respective exits.
Really clever, that, and really effective. But we usually just run a couple of halyards external ó in the front, out the back ó before stepping, and then go aloft with a weighted messenger and run the halyards with the mast in. It gets a clean lead faster, as we don't have to remove and replace hardware, or make a custom shuttle for each mast.
Sparbuilders will of course have their own tricks for this, but my experience is that, whatever those tricks are, they don't always work; we've found, um interesting interweavings inside new masts.
Fair leads,
Brion Toss