Why do I bother???? Rigged for the first sail of the season... hoisting the main sail in a hooley.... and snap! The main halyard snapped under tension and was obviously wearing on the exit hole (sharp carbon) of the mast. Unfortunately it's all come out as the main sail dropped. The mast has has a block at the top which I can remove to enable me to feed a new halyard in..... but is there a tried and tested method to get the halyard back down the inside of the mast and out again at the bottom? ....also need to smooth the exit point. Many thanks....again..... Martin

Hi,  I have a short length of sink plug chain and some light mono filament line. Stand the mast up to a bedroom window or club house balcony and then slowly feed in the line.  I have marked the line so I know when I have fed in enough to reach the correct hole.  Then go down and fetch out the line with a bit of bent wire. Simples. 

Hi---yes the above method works well. Instead of sink plug chain I use split lead shot straight onto the fine line --very easy to adjust the weight on the end----Good luck!

If you remove the spinnaker halyard block and feed the main halyard down the mast from the top you can then tape the main halyard to the spinny halyard and pull it down the mast without having to stand the mast up.  You will need a bent piece of wire to hook the halyard out of the mast.

Thanks all..... I'll crack on with it this week

Make sure you pull all the other ropes in the mast really tight so your new halyard doesn’t twist round them when you are lowering the weight

A couple of old shrouds with the ends cut off work well too. Like John says beware of crossing them inside the mast. pull the rest tight, and tilt the mast so that you have a clean run to the exit hole.