Now that September has arrived, the weather has turned cooler and I can spend more time working on Naiad without discomfort. One of the tasks for today was to continue with the halyard guide.

I made up a shell for the sheaves out of gash plywood to start with. This will allow me to check out the rope clearances and the angles.

As you can see from this photo, the shell is too wide for the sheaves, as they should fit snugly In to the shell, but this is just for testing and sanding down the end spacers to the correct width was too much effort for something that is going to be thrown away.

The ropes for are threaded through the various cleats, blocks and the new guide.

The guide is fairly good but the main check is the angle of the ropes through the sheaves.

Here is a slightly better look at the angle. If the rope in to and out of the sheave is not inline with the sheave then the rope will wear the sheave away over time. If you look at the left hand end of the shell you can see that there is a gap under the edge. This is due to the camber of the deck and means that either this end willed to be shimmed or the underside of the shell curved to fit the camber. The first is easy, the second is harder but the second is the better way to do it.

Next part of this task will be to build the shell in marine plywood.