Spare halyard - full run or messenger?

[nfbr]

To keep the spare halyard/s in the mast

Run full up and down? Tie off to use immediately.

Run up inside, messenger down outside. This reduces sun exposure to unused halyard.

Keep spare in locker. Run messengers and haul up as needed.

Who needs a spare Halyard. I have a topping lift.

What do you do? (Especially if the normal halyard is 2:1)

[vaporware]

I had a messenger for my second spinnaker halyard made of nylon parachute cord running inside my mast and a crew member caught it with his foot, tripped and broke it. It took three trips up the mast and a lot of swearing to run a new messenger.



Any future messenger use will be long enough to run the new halyard and no longer.

[Benz]

There's no sense keeping a spare 2:1 halyard messenger, since you have to go aloft to attach the deadend. Just use the topping lift as an emergency halyard. For all other runs, just tie the messenger off at the top and at the bottom, so only the portion inside the mast is messengered. Then you don't have a tiny bit of twine hanging outside forever that will likely snap from UV degradation when you actually need it.
As long as you have one halyard somewhere, you have a way of getting aloft. I like to messenger out a suspect halyard and feed in a dedicated "going aloft line" while I'm doing the job, then feed the old halyard back in.