They do have a plastic sheath covering the PBO fibers. What is a pain is the spoke nipples are a bastard configuration, requiring a special Park Tool wrench, which I have not yet obtained. But the wheels were dead true. Which probably speaks well of the spokes.

I also sail. The new high tech rigging appears great, not only to reduce weight aloft, but on boats I have seen using AmSteel and such (not quite as strong as PBO, only about 7X the strength of steel by weight instead of 10X like PBO), instead of turnbuckles, it appears they tension the lines by running through multiple purchase using simple rings. Thus, they are easily replaced at sea from a bulk spool of the stuff, without the need for swaging equipment or having shrouds already swaged to length. And that also makes it more economical.