In the marine stores you can find things called halyard monkeys. I have seen them for about $17.00 a pair and they really do a good job for those of us with more traditional boats which don't have halyards inside the mast. At night, when at anchor, you can use the monkey to belay the halyards off to the shrouds and thus separate them from the mast so that the wind doesn't cause them to slap all night and keep everyone awake and irritated. (They can't do anything for internal halyards, but that's another story).

What would you say if I told you that instead of paying $17.00 for a pair of halyard monkeys, you could get exactly the same thing for about $1.89 apiece.

Go to your neighborhood home center. Find the housewares department. Look for something called clothes-line travelers. THEY ARE EXACTLY THE SAME THING!

To use them, tuck the halyard in the slot and onto one of the sheaves. Hook the shroud through the other slot and onto the other sheave. Take the bitter end of the halyard and belay it back to its normal cleat on the mast. The sketches show the procedure.

The clothes-line traveler, (pardon me halyard monkey!) will scamper right up the shroud until it exactly bisects the angle made by halyard and shroud. This is why they call them monkeys!

No more halyard slap and a good nights sleep was had by all!

To bring the monkey down, get a ripe banana!

No, just let loose the bitter end of the halyard and the tension will come off and the monkey will come scampering right down again to be put away for the next time you need him. (Sorry about all you PC'ers out there, monkeys are hims!).

I've been using these for over 25 years now!