RS600: stretchy halyard?

Could be a number of things, what rope are you using?  Secondly is the cleat slipping slightly? They don't last forever.  Finally are you not meant to pretension the Halyard by pulling sail up then pulling loads of Cunningham on then release and pull sail up again?  To take out the stretch?  Could be wrong but seem to remember this from years ago when I borrowed one?

I don't think the cleat is slipping no. Embarrassingly, I don't know what rope I'm using (still relatively new to the sport). What kind of rope should I be using? The method you describe at the end of your post does ring a bell, but I think it's meant to be hard on the sail and I've spent 200 euro on sail repairs in the last 6 months so trying to avoid anything too onerous on the sail cloth. I'll have a look at that technique again though - I had thought it was optional and not a necessity.

Yeh I'm having the batten ends fixed at the moment actually. If you wouldn't mind, could I ask you to explain the method of 'pre-tensioning' the halyard with the downhaul in a bit of detail? I've had a read of the 2002 rigging guide but the instructions as to how to raise the sail and use the downhaul with halyard aren't detailed enough for me.

I've just tried to correct this very same problem, 1st off it was worn cleats, so I changed them, then it was diagnosed as stretchy halyard, so yesterday took myself off to the Chandlers via an hours traffic hold up and asked for their recommendation.

Dyneema core and its a£1 a metre came the reply, so 14 mtrs later and a lot of pfaffing around with fishing line and plumb weights (we'd already pulled the old one out by accident the race previously). Did it work? No, there was still a couple of inches, I'm hoping it was just new line 'stretching in' but am going to be gutted if it happens again on sunday.

The other thing we had problems with whilst I'm on, was spinnaker hoist going all curly then jamming in the block, we re roped that as well, but used some cheap stuff which seems to be ok so far, I've found that dyneema cored stuff to have more of a propensity for twisting than just plain 8 plaid, but would love to know the views of the hive mind.

Edited by iGRF - 27 Jun 14 at 9:01am

£1 a metre.....yeah that's going to stretch again. Something like Excel elite with the SK78 core should be more like it at nearly £3 a metre (4mm should do it).