Synthetic rigging

This is a posting from a guy I met in Sept. They were rigging the 43' Wooden boat (beautiful boat) for a passage down from Seattle to San Fransisco. Notice the Staysail Stay is Dynex Dux and the new staysail has "softies" or soft hanks as well.

Island Girl was rigged in Dynex Dex by Brion Toss wwwbriontoss.com using Colligo fittings www.colliogmarine.com


From a good piece on the subject of High-Mod Rope ..

We are probably witnessing the beginning of the end of an anomalous, 150-year reign of wire rope. Oh, wire won't go away altogether, I suspect, but will play a different smaller role in all aspects of rigging - Brion Toss
http://www.briontoss.com/education/archive/miscsept04.htm

I'm very interested in the use of High-Modulus ropes and seeing where things go these next years. My good friend is going this way on his 43' cruising cutter "Island Girl" and we began this summer by replacing his forestay under Brion's tutelage. With the Brummel's spliced in the loft and stay pre-stretched we were able to tension the dead eye by hand(s) .. 2 of us. After 800+ sea miles we re-tensioned it and took up less than 1/8" when we got to San Francisco. A new Staysail made by Carol Hasse has soft hanks like the ones on Colligo's site and while stiff at first they're working out well.
The Rep. from Colligo, I think his name was John was around as the Wooden Boat Festival was going on and was real helpful. He'd said they've had Dux that the Icelandic Fisherman had been dragging on the ocean floor for years, while looking rough & frayed was still getting the job done.

My foray into Dux will be this season when I replace my lifelines. I think Brion said they won't even make wire lifelines anymore on his jobs. I saw a Downeaster with it in Washington and am anxious to replace my cheese slicers. I'll post a thread with details.
 
Hi All,

Fascinating thread, thanks to everyone for their robust debate. I came here because I have a lifeline that needs replacing now and have been using synthetics elsewhere (mainly sheet strops, davits lines etc.) with good results.

People have mentioned lifelines in this thread and I wondered if anyone could supply more detail. I went looking for Dynex Dux but couldn't even get a price locally (I live in Western Australia) so settled for some 5mm Dyneema from my local chandler.

My existing lifelines have shackles at one end and pelican hooks at the other. At the forward end, I was planning to simply splice an eye and attach it directly to the SS loop on my pulpit (by pushing the splice through the loop and pulling the line through the splice - not sure what that's called, but is it OK to do here?). At the aft end, I was planning to splice another eye, attach it to a shackle the same way as I'd done for the forward end and then attach that to my existing pelican hook fittings. My main concern is getting the length right and also whether there will be enough adjustment in the pelican hooks to take up any stretch/settling in.

How have others done their lifelines?

Cheers from a hot, sunny Perth,

Rob Hills
 
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