Soft shackle attachment of sheets to headsail provides superior performance

In my last post I showed the process of making soft shackles. Today I was able to connect our two new eye spliced sheets to the head sail via the soft shackle and then take Prairie Gold for a test sail. From now on there is no going back to bowlines to attach sheets. When one tacks with the soft shackle and eye spliced sheet there are no knots to get caught on the shrouds. I was out solo today and was able to tack in apparent winds up to 25kts with ease and the sheets came through so fast it was not necessary to use a winch handle to tighten the sheets.

I am so impressed with soft shackles I have added three more: one for a block for the tackline and two for blocks for the sheets of the spinnaker.

Here is a picture of the sheets and soft shackle while sailing. The shackle is red and I have added a velcro strap (lavender) to keep the knot at the clew of the mast. At this point I haven't cut the ends of the dyneema line since I have been waiting to put a load in the knot. Just accomplished that, so now its time to cut the loose ends away.

Soft Shackle Construction – take home message – get the right line!

Having seen the virtues of soft shackles I decided to make rather than purchase for a price of about $35 a piece. We recently spliced eyes in the end of our sheets and would like to be able to rapidly attach and detach the sheets from the sails. To achieve this we tested a purchased soft shackle and it worked really well. I looked online, watched videos of how to do this and decided it was time to try it. Last night 6mm line arrived and the task was impossible. It’s necessary to feed the line inside the cover of the line (see pictures beneath) but I had the wrong line. I couldn’t sleep and in the middle of the night found a post that stated the specific line to use “Amsteel BlueDyneema AS-78 single braid 3/16 inch”. Importantly there is no core to this line, only the cover, which provides the strength. This line only costs $1.08 per foot at West Marine. Having purchased 30 feet this morning I went ahead and tried again. First attempt was a success. There is a great website that takesyou through the process with a good explanation and a calculator to pre-determine how much line to cut, and where to feed the line.

I have now quickly made two of these soft shackles and will attach to my headsail once the wind is a little lower.  To make a soft shackle of 2.65 inch diameter requires 41 inches of line which costs only ~$3.60. It takes 10 minutes to make and I will use them extensively.

A quick warning – don’t get colored line since the dye comes off very quickly.

Beneath is a sequence of the pictures of making the shackle.

 Feeding the line through the inside of line

 Open loop at the end of the spliced line

 Make a hole through the central line

 Feed the cover through the central core

 Pull tight

 Tie a diamond knot - I then tensioned it and will leave the loose ends attached until the knot has been under serious working load. Then the loose ends will be cut off.

The knot feeds through the eye and the cover is pulled over the core to tighten down onto the knot. With the line working loads up to at least 5,600 lbs are possible.

What an awful winter

One of the last posts mentioned that we intended to sail every month of 2015 having only missed March in 2014. Well were we in for a surprise in Boston for this winter - record snowfall in a month, all time record snowfall. Suffice it to say, February and March were not conducive to sailing. Now that its April however we have already managed to get out three times and have lots of catch up to do.

Over the winter we have had several repair jobs. Yolande has put her sewing skills to the test with repairs on our dodger. She has also become intrigued by soft-shackles. We purchased new sheets for our genoa and she has eye spliced the ends and we have purchased a soft shackle from west marine. They work great and prevent the hangup of the bowline knots on the shroud during a tack. We have installed one and will now attempt to make the second soft shackle. Will post pictures and comments later when we have learned the art of making the soft shackle. We are told they make great gifts for sailors. Watch out sailing friends, you know what you might get now.