Best type of shackles for Spinnaker sheets and guys

[Topcat47]

+1 for soft shackles. I've been hit on the head by a flogging sail and the steel shackles hurt a lot. I now have two wichard hooks in my ditty bag. They'll do when I next change halyards.

Of course I"m NOT a racing man so the time element is not a factor.

 

[john_morris_uk]

Racing or not, you can't trigger a soft shackle to get a kite down if the wind gets up and you are cruising. I thought I'd be clever and tried to run the sheet and guy once when the wind got up in the Irish Sea. Most of my spinnaker pole is at the bottom of the sea now. I've kept one end as a momenta...

It's nothing to do with racing vs cruising, or the dangers of flogging sails with shackles attached, but all about how you safely release the tack of the spinnaker when it's under load.

 

[Topcat47]

Good point, but I don't fly a spinnaker, I have a parasail with a snuffer. Once in the bag, fiddling with the soft shackles isn't difficult and if it is, the whole thing gets dumped down the hatch and the sheets follow.

 

[laika]

I've found these to be by far the easiest to use in anger.

Sorry to come back to this but...are the large bail ones advisable if you intend clipping your guys onto the bails?

And are the considerations different for guy shackles than they are for sheets?

 

[flaming]

Sorry to come back to this but...are the large bail ones advisable if you intend clipping your guys onto the bails?

Yes

And are the considerations different for guy shackles than they are for sheets?

Not really.

 

[laika]

Thanks again. Can't believe how much a bit of rope with a metal clip on the end costs but I have to find some justification for spending days like this in an office...

 

[langstonelayabout]

+1

Nowadays I tie the sheet onto our cruising chute with a bowline, but for spinnakers we always had a conventional snap-shackle with a few inches of tail to grab.

Pete

I've always tied the sheets/guy onto spinnakers, be they symmetrical or asymmetrical.

Have I been missing something all this time? Or have 35 years of telling a bad tempered piece of nylon who is boss lulled me into a false sense of safety?

I admit to only blowing 2 spinnakers out leaving only their tapes flying..