Preventing headsail hanks from catching ?

You could take a small SS hose clamp, clamp it around the forestay above the swage (or sta-lok or norseman or whatever) and then wrap it several times with rigging tape.

You could also manufacture a plastic or aluminium collar to attach, but the hoseclamp and rigging tape is pretty cheap and easy.

You could also just make a stop out of rigging tape..........

Rather then a plastice turnbuckkle tube use what I use on my shroud and backstay turnbuckles, white PVC pipe. This is  avaialable at any Home Depot, Lowes hardware store etc. It is very cheap, it won't suffocate the ss and acts as a roller of sort.

I'd like to see that posted in the gallery section or in this section, Virago Deb.  Great suggestions by all, by the way.

José

Ok Jose, this one's for you...I don't have the technology nor the know-how to post pictures, so here's the instructions on how to make a rope stopper for your hanks.  It took me a while to figure out how to explain this.

The short version:  Make several layers of west country whipping until you get a thickness suitable to make a stopper.

The long version:  How to do west country whipping.  To do WC whipping you have to be able to do a simple overhand knot - that's half a reef knot, or the over-and-under thing you do before the bow when you tie your shoes.  Take about a foot of very light line or rather heavy string, start in the middle with even lengths on either side.  Tie an overhand knot on one side of the wire where it meets the turnbuckle.  Now, pass the ends of the line around to the other side of the wire and tie another overhand knot above the first bit of line.  Keep doing that, one side then the other, pulling the knots snug and firming them down on the one below - that's west country whipping.  Keep going for, say, six or 8 passes, or more if you want to be extravagant.  As whipping, once you got enough passes on the rope you were finishing you would tie off the last course with a reef knot or two, then singe the ends of the whipping twine.  For this job, however, what you'll do is start working down over the whipping you've just done and make it two layers thick.  Once you get to the bottom, turn and go up again for three layers.  Do this until you have enough to stop your hanks or until you run out of string.  Just to make it look mildly spiffy, I made each pass a few courses shorter than the last so that the work bulged slightly in the middle.  It sounds very yachty, but really it's just a pile of knots.  As the late canoe guru Bill Mason once wrote: if you don't know knots, tie lots.

Thanks for the knotty advice Virago Deb. ;-)

José