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.