What is the issue?
Connecting to a cable or line and supporting a parallel load is not an easy task and few knots can do it without slipping down the line.Why address this?
A facility to do this would be most convenient, particularly whilst working aloft in the rigging as a quick safety point. A method of accomplishing this will find 101 uses in general practice aboard a yacht.How to address this?
Have some loops made up and turn them into a sturdy 'loop strop' to enable quick and easy direct connection to lines and cables as below.
I was introduced to this technique when lifting replacement cap shrouds and a head stay in New Zealand. My first approach was to place the halyard through the eye of the shrouds and then hoist it aloft. This made it very difficult above as the halyard had to be undone from the eye to insert the clevis pin. The result was I had to hold the unsupported weight of the shroud whilst swinging in the bosuns' chair trying to position it. This was less than ideal.
Watching me work this way the boatyard owner brought out his strop and attached it to the next shroud about a metre from the top. This made the task a breeze as the eye was now free to drop in place with the shroud's weight resting on the halyard.
After that, we got some loops for strops and used it occasionally to attach to a tiller without fixings, plus as a safety connection anchor point when aloft. We found it useful to connect to a sheet when it was jammed solid in a riding turn on the winch. We wrapped it tight around the sheet and pulling from an adjacent block to take the load off the riding turn.
With thanks to:
Michael Harpur, Yacht Obsession.
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