You will need to buy new halyards as the stock ones will be too short. Unless you have replaced your halyards recently you probably could use new ones anyway. Sixty feet should be sufficient. You can buy pre-made halyards with the shackles already spliced on or cut your shackles off and have them spliced onto your new line, either way don’t skimp on the line. Buy a good low stretch line or you’ll be sorry. Once you cut the shackels off you should be able to use the old halyards to pull the new ones thru without dropping the mast. When running the halyards aft to the cockpit chances are you’ll want both of them to come back on one side. You will need to cut a new exit hole in the mast to bring one of them over to the other side. This can be done by drilling two holes and then joining them as a slot with a saber saw. If you don’t do such a pretty job you can always pop rivet a SS exit plate cover over it. Be sure to stager the exit hole from the one on the other side. You will need to mount some kind of turning blocks at the base of the mast to direct the halyards over to the side of the cabin house. I choose to mount the blocks to the mast instead of the deck; the fewer holes drilled in the deck the better. I took the butt of the mast off and thru bolted the eye straps with the bullet blocks to the mast. You then need to mount another turning block to the deck to direct the halyards back to the cockpit. On the H23 this is a little tricky, you need to get the halyards as far out as possible so when they go back they don’t rub against the pop top or hand holds. The problem is the cabin top is not flat out there, you can’t use the usual deck organizer. You can see in the picture I had to find a stacked block. No matter what kind of hardware or how you mount it be sure to thru bolt everything with large fender washers or backing plates and seal all the holes properly.

This is a great upgrade to the Hunter 23

In this picture you can see I ended up mounting two fair leads to direct the halyards out to the edge of the cabin house. I took the original winch off the mast and mounted it to the cabin house along with the new halyard clutches. Again thru bolt with large fender washers or some kind of backing plate and seal all holes properly. Note the placement of the Genoa track snugged up close to the cabin house. If you have one of the older H23’s with the shorter mast spreaders this is where you want the Genoa tracks mounted. This makes for much tighter sheeting angles up wind.

Drilling holes in your boat can be fun!

OK, now you’re a happy camper because you can hoist and lower your sails from the safety of your cockpit. Now where do you put those halyard tails? You can let them get all tangled up on the cockpit sole or you could throw them down into the companionway. What I decided to do was install a halyard bag. The problem I found was that most of the pre-made bags were too big. I ended up buying a halyard bag kit from Sail-Rite and made it the size I wanted. Looks pretty good don’t you think? Cockpit lead halyards are a great upgrade to the Hunter 23 which I think should have been standard equipment from the factory.

Almost ready to go sailing