The Jib Halyard

My jib is hoisted with a halyard that is tied off to the pin rail at the base of the mast. I had difficulty putting enough tension on the halyard and the luff of the sail bowed out. I tried using a truckies hitch to pull down harder on the halyard; this helped a bit but there was too much friction around the pinrail and where the rope crossed itself. Finally I did this:

Now I can get enough tension on the jib. It still bows out a little but I am satisfied with the result. In the photo I have tied it off on two pins to make the setup clearer; in actual use both black and yellow lines would be tied off on the outer pin.

As an aside; when running downwind, with the boom out as far as possible, the boom hits the halyards which is not a good thing, My partial solution to this is to use the outside pins for the halyards that have the most tension and the inner pins for the lightly loaded tail of the lazy jacks.

From left to right, the peak and throat halyards, two spare pins, tail of lazy jacks/topping lift and the jib halyard.