0 a rope or cable (= a metal rope) that is used to pull something such as a sail or flag up or down on a ship: --
The head (top corner) is attached to the spinnaker halyard, which is used to raise the sail up the mast.
The flames that lit our decks stood faithful sentinels over their halyards until they, like the ship, were entirely consumed.
He was pinned under a broken mastbeam and thrashed about the face by a loose halyard, whose metal-capped end gouged out his eye.
To sweat the halyard is to take as much slack out of it as possible.
The halyard, the line which raises the sail, is attached to the head.
The running rigging which pulls up the junk sail are: the "halyard," whose purpose is to raise the junk sail up the mast.
In its most basic form, it requires only two lines, a halyard and a sheet, making it very simple to operate.
The peak halyard, used to hoist the main sail, had disappeared.
