Halyard/sail discussion:
<br>IRT 2: The advantage of the hook is that there is only a small length of wire rope that is tensioned (streched) as you downhaul the sail. If you "lock" the sail by cleating the halyard at the bottom of the mast, when you downhaul you will be tensioning the entire length of halyard, most of which is stretchy polyester rope.
<br>IRT 3: With the exception of the comptip, the H16 mast has not changed over the years. The halyards and sails made a big change in the early '80s. As other have noted, the early sails had reef points and the halyard had a longer wire rope section with two swages for locking into the hook, one for full up and one for reefed. Later sails no longer had reef points and the halyard went to a shorter wire rope section with a swage right at the transition to polyester. There is no problem adding reef points to a later style sail but the halyard would need to be modified as well (to use with the hook, which I recommend).
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