Giles and Paula's Great Retirement Adventure

[Bums_Fan]

I frickin' love knots and splicing.  Not very good at it, but I am fascinated by those that can.  When I saw these posts, I turned back to my bookshelf and start thumbing through this book to remind myself how cool this skill is.

[Giles]

I'm loving the learning…..

[Giles]

@goosehd:

Damn G!  Keep this up and you’ll have to get the “hold fast” tattoos on the knuckles and the pig and the rooster tattooed on the feet.

[Giles]

My knot book, not really a Bible because it misses loads of useful stuff out …... Oh wait.....

[Seul]

Would you say it's knot complete or?..

[Graham]

Is it easy to read out loud or do you get a bit tongue-tied??

[goosehd]

[Sage954]

All along I thought I was the odd 🪢 guy. Jug sling is my favorite.

[Giles]

Shorter version…...

[Giles]

New "improved" version…..

[Sage954]

Nice work

[Matt]

I love knots, I just can’t ever seem to remember them.

[goosehd]

@Matt Maybe it’s because you’re not knotty enough

[Matt]

Jesus Dennis that’s the daddest joke of the day.  Slow clap.

[goosehd]

Thank you, thank you…I’ll see myself out…

[Giles]

More splicing….

Endless loop in 4mm Dyneema, and Dog Bone in 6mm Dyneema.....

[louisbosco]

still can't wrap my head on how you splice a rope and still have so much fabric left.

[Giles]

8mm Dyneema soft shackle - Breaking strain circa 12,000 kilos, which is about 13 US Tons…..

[motojobobo]

What are they used for? Is such a high breaking strength necessary?
Very cool stuff @Giles ! Please keep posting them.

[Giles]

I will use this one as part of my anchor bridle.  If you go here,

http://kestrelsails.com/2020/05/27/building-an-anchor-bridle/

then where this guy uses a metal shackle, I will use the soft-shackle.

I'm trying to minimise the use of things that will corrode, plus it is way lighter and stronger than a metal shackle.  Do I need this breaking strain?  No, but no harm in a bit of over-engineering.

I'll also make some soft-shackles to attach the fixed mooring warps to the cleats on our jetty.  I can make the soft shackles in advance, but I can't build the warps until I know the placement of the cleats on the jetty and the cleats on the boat.  The 4 or 5 warps will usually be left behind on the jetty when we go for short trips, but I want to be able to unattach them from the jetty cleats when we are away on longer trips, the soft-shackles are ideal for this, no tools needed and don't corrode.

I've just made the pennant that will attach the anchor bridle to the anchor chain imagine the chair is the anchor chain, I may make another, I had a different concept in mind when I started splicing this, so it is possibly not long enough and it has asymmetrical end eyes (which do not matter from a functionality point of view, but piss me off aesthetically)….......

This is how I originally envisaged it would work, if I get no slippage from this knot on the anchor chain with this arrangement, I don't need to build a new pennant…