Stern tie rope storage

[Jd1]

I am contemplating a stern tie setup. I am looking at 3/8" floating polypropylene line (3200 lbs breaking strength seems sufficient for a 36 ft boat). A full spool is 600 ft which seems the recommended length. The thing I have a hard time figuring out is how to store this line. It seems that storing it on the spool is popular and makes a lot of sense but how do you retrieve and spool that amount of line without going nuts? If I build a support for the spool just outside the pullpit, I can take up half of a rotation of the spool by hand. This seems a very long and awkward process. Has anyone come up with a better method of re-spooling the line back onto the spool ?

[tbodine88]

How about a bucket with a 2 inch hole in the top. You drop it in just like the anchor rode up foward. It'll coil with out tangling. Seems easier than getting it off the spool. Place the bucket near the wheel before docking or just leave it there.

By the way, pulling in 600' of line would drive me nuts too

[cfarrar]

Can you attach a winch handle to the spool? Once the spool gets some radius it should go pretty fast.

[jackdale]

Garden hose reel?

There are also purpose-built stern line reels.

I just noticed BC. You only need about 300 feet anywhere in our neck of the woods. That should get you to shore and back almost anywhere.

[Jd1]

Originally Posted by cfarrar

Can you attach a winch handle to the spool? Once the spool gets some radius it should go pretty fast.

What I was thinking is to mount a piece of 1" Stainless pipe horizontally about one foot behind the stern pullpit and attached with standard canvas hardware. That would put a 1" stainless pipe out on each side to the crosspipe that holds the spool. That would make attaching a handle on the spool flange a no-go and that is why I was thinking I could only spool a small bit at a time - because the mounting system interferes.
I am trying to think how I can best mount the spool from one side so I could use a winding handle on the free standing side but so far I have not come up with a solution that is easy to attach.

[Jd1]

Originally Posted by jackdale

Garden hose reel?

There are also purpose-built stern line reels.

I just noticed BC. You only need about 300 feet anywhere in our neck of the woods. That should get you to shore and back almost anywhere.

Thanks, I will look into a garden hose reel.
Poly line is relatively cheap so it makes sense to me to have a bit more rather than to end up short.

[jim_thomsen]

We have 2 300foot lines, each stored in a mesh bag. We don't use a stern line that often, so these are stored under our dinghy on the front deck. When we are using them (when we sailed around New Zealand and in the Fiords we used 2 stern lines almost every anchorage) we put the bags midships, just inside the shrouds. The lines feed out easily and then just get dumped back into the bag when done.
This also makes it easy to run the line around a winch. See: Equipment Page 2

[arisatx]

jd1:

There was a good thread over on sailnet on this topic, with some pics on various options, including what Evans Starzinger uses (mesh bags):

here

We wound up finding reel components at McMaster to put on our stern gate - here it's mocked up with extension cord during our winter layup.