Halyard hitch vs Bowline ?

Hypocacculus

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What is the advantage of a more or less undoable knot to fasten the halyard to the sail over a spliced eye?

We have a shackle on a spliced eye. The advantage of the shackle to me is we can readily remove the halyard from the sail and fasten it away from the mast when not in use to avoid noise. Obviously the shackle could be joined to the halyard by a knot rather than a spliced eye, but what are the relative merits?

I've always been led to believe that splices are stronger than knots; a line that is going to break will invariably break at the knot as they create a weak point which splices don't. Having said that, our inherited genoa halyard is knotted; I guess the advantage of a knot is that you can quickly tie one with no extra equipment needed whereas fewer people know how to splice modern cored, braided line.
 

johnphilip

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A better idea please

We have the halyard knot not only on the main halyard but also on the reef pennants pulling the tack down to the gooseneck. They have the advantage of allowing the sail to be pulled really close to the boom but servicing the Selden single line reefing involves undoing these rock hard knots to allow the boom end to be removed. Cutting off the knots I don't like to do as the reduced length might not allow the reef to fully release. Access to the boom 's internal sliders is needed on our particular model because the nylon sliders tend do disappear after 2-4 seasons
What alternative is there? I don't think splicing is a option as the rope is nearly as big as the sheeves.
At the moment I spend a frustrating hour eventually undoing the halyard knots.
 

Hypocacculus

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We have the halyard knot not only on the main halyard but also on the reef pennants pulling the tack down to the gooseneck. They have the advantage of allowing the sail to be pulled really close to the boom but servicing the Selden single line reefing involves undoing these rock hard knots to allow the boom end to be removed. Cutting off the knots I don't like to do as the reduced length might not allow the reef to fully release. Access to the boom 's internal sliders is needed on our particular model because the nylon sliders tend do disappear after 2-4 seasons
What alternative is there? I don't think splicing is a option as the rope is nearly as big as the sheeves.
At the moment I spend a frustrating hour eventually undoing the halyard knots.

Not my idea but recently I saw the suggestion that you tie the knot around some spare scraps of line core. When you come to undo the knot again, you pull the scraps out with pliers or some such which allows some slack into the knot. I have no idea if this works though.

and as an afterthought, there is also the dinghy technique of tying a stop knot in the end of the line, passing a loop of the same line though the cringle, feeding the end with the stopknot through the loop, then pulling everything tight. Not entirely convinced it would be suitable for reefing lines though as they are unloaded most of the time.
 
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johnphilip

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Not my idea but recently I saw the suggestion that you tie the knot around some spare scraps of line core. When you come to undo the knot again, you pull the scraps out with pliers or some such which allows some slack into the knot. I have no idea if this works though.
Thanks, that sounds worth a try. Although, if it caused the reef pennant to slip undone when hard pressed with 2 reefs it might get interesting.
 

john_morris_uk

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Its more compact. I don't have the vertical distance to use a spliced eye and shackle. Also you can "end for end" your halyard to spread the wear out when you have a knot rather than an eye.

I'm not criticising the knot (and have used it myself) but so long as you are not mean when you buy your halyards, you can cut a splice off and end for end it and either use the knot as described or re-splice. (Old line is a so and so to splice so a knot might be easier when you end for end the halyard…)
 
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