Stealth mode - New Generation Ropes

[Breaking Waves]

Originally Posted by fxykty

I’ve read just recently that Brummel locks on an eye splice reduce the strength of the splice more than a plain bury eye splice. Is this correct?

yes, correct, by about 10%

Due to possible unloaded movement in the bridle legs in particular and their connections to the boat and to the leader I’m thinking that a Brummel lock eye splice, plus a full 72x bury, is the best protection against those eye splices opening up.

Or is just lock stitching enough and no reason to bother with a Brummel lock?


Neither the Brummel nor 72x bury add any measurable testable benefit and they are really not used in applications where people pay attention to engineering and test results. A properly constructed lock stitched 60x straight bury (w 30x taper to less than a strand at point) gives you everything you can get. A similarity properly constructed stitched tapered 45x bury gets you 99%.

But do whatever allows you to sleep well at night. If some extra bury helps you sleep go for it. If you don’t trust your lock stitching, do a Brummel (but lock stitch also). If you use properly sized line and take decent care on the details anything you do here will be immensely reliable. Pull on the splices with your biggest winches as hard as you can - should give you extra confidence and it is useful to “set” them.

I’ve had the sense there has been some splice one upsmanship “my bury is longer than theirs, my lock more secure than theirs” going on, which objectively has past the point of diminishing returns.

do remember this stuff has very very little elasticity, so will generate big shock loads in dynamic situations.it can occasionally break hardware and structure which held up fine with polyester or nylon connections.

[fxykty]

Originally Posted by Breaking Waves

do remember this stuff has very very little elasticity, so will generate big shock loads in dynamic situations.it can occasionally break hardware and structure which held up fine with polyester or nylon connections.

Thanks for the reply.

Next question is about making the taper in the bury. Samson and some other instructions say 1/3 of the bury should be tapered (eg for a 10mm line the last 240mm of a 720mm bury) and to do a 6 and 3 strand removal and cut the end at 45 degrees. That doesn’t seem to be much of a taper.

Another set of instructions suggests 1/3 of the bury should be tapered one strand at a time over 12 equal intervals, so for the 10mm line example divide the last 240mm into 20mm sections and take one strand out at each interval to the end. I like this method more.

But, should the full 12 strands be intact for the entire 72x and taper an additional 24x, or is it correct to have 12 strands for 48x and taper the remaining 24x?

Regarding shock loading on the boat or components of the drogue I’m not sure. The point of a series drogue is to gradually add drag in response to a given sudden load (eg a breaking wave). Ultimate loads could be very high, but not applied suddenly as the small cones initially slip - at least until all the catenary is straightened out and the rode is in a straight line.

How much weight? Ocean Brake says relatively light - only 18kg for a 156 cone JSD. I’ve seen others recommend 50kg or more. Thoughts?

[Breaking Waves]

Originally Posted by fxykty

JSD

Ah, somehow I thought you were talking about a mooring/anchoring bridle where there is more shock.

You should be fine on the JSD,

Although I don’t know much about the structure and characteristics of high performance multihull.

[conachair]

Might be of interest re series drogue >

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B8Pl5MCdV4

[Seaworthy Lass]

Drogue construction is plodding along.

Attaching the cones is monotonous drudgery (they take 12 minutes each and I have attached only 70 of the 164) but today’s task of working out how to make the bridle has been a pleasure. I enjoy conquering new techniques and I have the luxury of time to do this at the moment in a beautiful location .

I never had the chance to change the 12 mm line I bought earlier for 14 mm (I primarily wanted to do this for chafe protection), but I have come up with what I think is a neat solution that would likely also work on other boats.

I have made the eye that will attach to one of our twin bollards at the stern long enough that it actually extends out past the panama leads. This halves the load on this section and should help with reducing chafe anywhere the bridle contacts the boat.

In addition I have covered the eye with a UHMWPE sleeve from Southern Ropes. To secure this I used a modified version of Samson’s technique that Breaking Waves posted an image of earlier in this thread.

After feeding the sleeve onto the line and creating the eye (lock stitched long bury of 72 x line diameter), I first tried taping the sleeve 30cm from the end and unravelling the 48 strands back to this point then weaving 6 bundles of 8 strands straight up so it resembled Samson’s image. I taped the ends of the bundle of strands and simply poked them through by hand. No equipment was needed for this.

It all looked and felt a bit loose so I unravelled it and divided the strands into 12 bundles of 4 and wove that straight up. It was better, but still didn’t look optimal.

Another unravel followed. I have zero patience when it comes to some things, but for some reason I have the patience of a saint when it comes to rope work .

This time I twisted each bundle before weaving it (in a contrary direction to how it was woven) to keep it neater and then wove it in a swirl by following one strand of the Acera. This it a similar to how octoplait is spliced, but rather than weaving two strands together four times, I wove bundles of four through twelve time.

Bingo! That looked just right. I tucked each bundle in 6 times as it swirled around, then just buried the rest in the centre of the core without bothering to taper (the load is halved in the eye and the cover is thin so I deemed it unnecessary).

It worked so well that I will now use this as my standard method of attaching chafe protection.

This is how it looks:

[Seaworthy Lass]

This is how the threads looked unravelled.

It was easy doing this without any tools. Just finger it loose. The strands parted neatly when pulled out with no tendency to tangle.

[Seaworthy Lass]

This is a close up shot of how the strands of the chafe protection look when woven in. They become almost invisible.

The second image is Samson’s version, which is the technique I tried first while experimenting:

[Fi2010]

Originally Posted by conachair

Might be of interest re series drogue >

In the video, Reeves and Series Drogue promoter, Morgan’s Cloud, weren’t sure if the Shark can be used in extreme conditions. The answer is yes. The Shark, just like the JSD, is designed for heavy weather. Randall Reeves has successfully deployed the Shark Drogue in rough seas. Additionally, many U.S. Coast Guard cutters carry the Shark Drogue for heavy weather deployment.

As a reminder, the Shark is designed to keep a boat actively moving, while the JSD is designed to let you passively wait out the storm. Both present the stern to the weather.

Video corrections:
The inventor of the Shark is actually Zack Smith. The Shark is manufactured by Fiorentino in Newport Beach, CA and not San Diego.

[fxykty]

Originally Posted by Seaworthy Lass

Drogue construction is plodding along.



Attaching the cones is monotonous drudgery (they take 12 minutes each and I have attached only 70 of the 164) but today’s task of working out how to make the bridle has been a pleasure. I enjoy conquering new techniques and I have the luxury of time to do this at the moment in a beautiful location .



I never had the chance to change the 12 mm line I bought earlier for 14 mm (I primarily wanted to do this for chafe protection), but I have come up with what I think is a neat solution that would likely also work on other boats.



I have made the eye that will attach to one of our twin bollards at the stern long enough that it actually extends out past the panama leads. This halves the load on this section and should help with reducing chafe anywhere the bridle contacts the boat.



In addition I have covered the eye with a UHMWPE sleeve from Southern Ropes. To secure this I used a modified version of Sampson’s technique that Breaking Waves posted an image of earlier in this thread.



After feeding the sleeve onto the line and creating the eye (lock stitched long bury of 72 x line diameter), I first tried taping the sleeve 30cm from the end and unravelling the 48 strands back to this point then weaving 6 bundles of 8 strands straight up so it resembled Samson’s image. I taped the ends of the bundle of strands and simply poked them through by hand. No equipment was needed for this.



It all looked and felt a bit loose so I unravelled it and divided the strands into 12 bundles of 4 and wove that straight up. It was better, but still didn’t look optimal.



Another unravel followed. I have zero patience when it comes to some things, but for some reason I have the patience of a saint when it comes to rope work .



This time I twisted each bundle before weaving it (in a contrary directing to how it was woven) to keep it neater and then wove it in a swirl by following one strand of the Acera. This it a similar to how octoplait is spliced, but rather than weaving two strand together four times, I wove bundles of four through twelve time.



Bingo! That looked just right. I tucked the bundle in 6 times as they swirled around, then just buried the rest in the centre of the core without bothering to taper (the load is halved in the eye so I deemed it unnecessary).



It worked so well that I will now use this as my standard method of attaching chafe protection.



This is how it looks:

This is awesome, thanks for the experimentation on our behalf (and yours as well of course)!

Regarding bury length, is the taper taken from within the bury length or in addition to the bury length? E.g. if the bury length is 500mm, is the taper started at 250mm or at 500mm?

[Seaworthy Lass]

Originally Posted by fxykty

Regarding bury length, is the taper taken from within the bury length or in addition to the bury length? E.g. if the bury length is 500mm, is the taper started at 250mm or at 500mm?

The taper is part of the bury length. I very gradually taper a third of a 72 x line diameter bury length, cutting the strands at an angle.

So for my 12 mm diameter bridle, I buried 860 mm, 580 mm of which was full thickness and 280 mm tapered. I lock stitched just below the insertion point using a strand out of 8 mm diameter Acera, following Samson’s excellent lock stitching instructions.

SWL

[fxykty]

Originally Posted by Seaworthy Lass

The taper is part of the bury length. I very gradually taper a third of a 72 x line diameter bury length, cutting the strands at an angle.

So for my 12 mm diameter bridle, I buried 860 mm, 580 mm of which was full thickness and 280 mm tapered. I lock stitched just below the insertion point using a strand out of 8 mm diameter Acera, following Samson’s excellent lock stitching instructions.

SWL

Thanks very much.

Regarding lock stitching, also using the Samson instructions, I can easily stitch between the strands of the outer rope. But do I need to try to avoid the strands of the buried rope? Or is it OK to just poke the needle through, avoiding the outer strands and bisecting them six to each side, and poking through the bury rope sight unseen and likely through the strands?

[Seaworthy Lass]

Originally Posted by fxykty

Thanks very much.

Regarding lock stitching, also using the Samson instructions, I can easily stitch between the strands of the outer rope. But do I need to try to avoid the strands of the buried rope? Or is it OK to just poke the needle through, avoiding the outer strands and bisecting them six to each side, and poking through the bury rope sight unseen and likely through the strands?

I think it is important the strands of the outer rope are not pierced, but I have found little information regarding the inner portion.

It is impossible not to pierce the strands of the inner portion, but if you use a very blunt needle and wriggle it to insert it, it is possible to avoid creating the crackling noise that indicates the fibres of the buried rope are being cut. This is not easy to do and it is very time consuming.

I now use a sharp needle and don’t worry about the buried portion. It seems to produce minimal crackling with heavily coated UHMWPE such as Acera and Stealth Super 12. The needle seems to mainly slide between the fibres rather than cutting them. I doubt the odd cut fibre in the buried tail has much practical significance.

SWL

[BigBeakie]

Very shmick, SWL. Very nice indeed, thanks so much. Our order with Timms fell through becuz of their new, unannounced, minimum length requirement, so waiting on delivery from alternate supplier.

The attachment of the JSD bridle to our drogue chainplates is still not fully resolved, in my mind. The bend radius of a 3/4" Crosby is my concern on direct Acera eye, unless I use a strong gusset eye thimble???


Sent from my iPad using Cruisers Sailing Forum

[Seaworthy Lass]

Originally Posted by BigBeakie

The attachment of the JSD bridle to our drogue chainplates is still not fully resolved, in my mind. The bend radius of a 3/4" Crosby is my concern on direct Acera eye, unless I use a strong gusset eye thimble???

Does it need to be a metal shackle? Is there some reason a soft shackle with an anti chafe sleeve could not be used?

SWL

[fxykty]

Originally Posted by BigBeakie

Very shmick, SWL. Very nice indeed, thanks so much. Our order with Timms fell through becuz of their new, unannounced, minimum length requirement, so waiting on delivery from alternate supplier.

The attachment of the JSD bridle to our drogue chainplates is still not fully resolved, in my mind. The bend radius of a 3/4" Crosby is my concern on direct Acera eye, unless I use a strong gusset eye thimble???


Sent from my iPad using Cruisers Sailing Forum

I’ve been buying Acera Amundsen from Greenline Fishing in Denmark. They don’t seem to have minimum length requirements and their prices are great (about 1/3 the cost per metre in NZ, even adding in the shipping cost).

The only downside is that only yellow Acera is available. Using it for our JSD and reef lines. The soft shackles I make from the remaining line will be colourful as well.

Same as SWL’s advice, make high strength soft shackles from the same diameter as your bridle and you won’t have to add thimbles or hard shackles to the boat connections.