How do I thread the halyard of a laser sailboat if the rope comes out completely?

Question

I work at a summer camp and on one of the sailboats the halyard (the rope that pulls up the sail) came completely out of the mast. It's a laser sailboat. I need to know how to rethread the rope through the mast. Please help, we just got the boat donated to us a few weeks ago.

Answer 1

You need to be able to stand the mast vertically, and get above it. Not easy, unless you have a 2 or 3 storey building with an opening window. Or a sailing club with a good high balconey.
You need a weight in order to feed thin whipping twine down the mast. The weight might be a couple of screws, small nuts, or the chain from a bathroom plug (but only if it is made of the small flexible linkages, rather than the larger loops).
Take the pulley off the top of the mast, and lower the weight plus twine down the mast. Lower it until it goes past the exit hole.
Get a piece of wire with a hook on the end (crochet hook style), and poke it through the exit hole at the bottom, and hook the twine out of the hole.
Tie the new halyard to the twine: clove hitch 2 inches up the halyard plus another clove-hitch on the very end to guide it. Wrap a SMALL piece of tape around it to keep it all together.
GENTLY pull the twine out of the top of the mast, and the halyard should follow.
Make sure you have a figure 8 in the end of the halyard, or else you will pull it too far!

Answer 2

If it is actually a Laser, they do not have a halyard. A Laser sail slides over the mast and is held on the the mast by downward pressure from a line that runs down to the deck.
Other boats with a halyard typically have a block/pulley at the top of the mast which the halyard would feed through.

Answer 3

There is a snake that electricians use to pull wire through conduit. You can find this at Home Depot. Its kind of expensive if you're only doing this one time.

I had to reeve line through my boom for my reefing system and what I ended up doing was taking the boom off and using a fishing weight on the end of a small piece of line and using that line as a "messenger" to pull the larger diameter line through.

Good Luck!

Answer 4

First off it's not a laser. It must be a laser 2. And just rethread it its not that hard.