Your best bridle recipe?

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by thinwater

Camel hitch with a half hitch added. Very good choice on rope or chain.


Basically it is a rolling hitch with one turn reversed, and that one change is a big deal.

Thank you for identifying that. It’s been driving me nuts trying to remember. I just saw it when I was looking through my pictures on my phone for something else.

They ought to call it the boa constrictor.

The harder you pull on it the tighter it gets. It’s pretty cool.

I’m going to try that with my bridal set up sometime. It’s working fine as it is. But that would be a more elegant solution especially when there is rope rode involved.

[jbinbi]

Would like to hear others thoughts on our procedure to anchor.

This is on a 38 ft seawind. It has bridle points from the manufacturer below the crossbeam, and each line is about 18 ft, beam of the boat was 20ft.

The ends of each bridle that will attach tobthe rode were put together in an anchor shackle. On the shackle is a piece of dynema attached with a bowline.

We drop anchor and let out correct amt of chain. Then about 2 ft back from roller, we put the tail end of the dynema through a chain link. Tie with a bowline.

Then let out a bunch more chain until we know it will be bridle taking the strain, and reverse the boat till we know the anchor is set.

Long explanation to say we connect our bridle to the chain with a piece of dynema that just fits through the chain. We used to use a metal hook, fell off to easily, read about the dynema on an anchor thread here.



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[team karst]

I am learning how to deal with a bridle, even after a full year of cruising. A non-tidal set is very easy ; the boat points into the wind, the bridal, chain, and anchor are forward. Now, what happens in a tidal situation with 10 to 20 knts of wind? Its 3 am and the boat overruns all the submerged hardware. If the bridal is long, one leg will head under one hull. If the depth is only 10’ or so, the claw may drag on the seafloor, the nylon may foul on something. Basically, the bridal is too long for tidal current switches. If tightened up, it may be shorter than desired. I dont see an automatic hands off solution. Signed: sleepy.

[SailFastTri]

Originally Posted by jbinbi

Would like to hear others thoughts on our procedure to anchor.

This is on a 38 ft seawind. It has bridle points from the manufacturer below the crossbeam, and each line is about 18 ft, beam of the boat was 20ft.

The ends of each bridle that will attach tobthe rode were put together in an anchor shackle. On the shackle is a piece of dynema attached with a bowline.

We drop anchor and let out correct amt of chain. Then about 2 ft back from roller, we put the tail end of the dynema through a chain link. Tie with a bowline.

Then let out a bunch more chain until we know it will be bridle taking the strain, and reverse the boat till we know the anchor is set.

Long explanation to say we connect our bridle to the chain with a piece of dynema that just fits through the chain. We used to use a metal hook, fell off to easily, read about the dynema on an anchor thread here.



Sent from my SM-G991U using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

Dyneema single-braid is too slippery to tie reliably with a bowline. I've read that a butterfly knot is reliable, but it's very complicated and doesn't come out easily after loading.
IMHO - You should splice it at each end. Splice loops into each end and use shackles. Soft shackles are fine if properly constructed.

[fxykty]

Originally Posted by team karst

I am learning how to deal with a bridle, even after a full year of cruising. A non-tidal set is very easy ; the boat points into the wind, the bridal, chain, and anchor are forward. Now, what happens in a tidal situation with 10 to 20 knts of wind? Its 3 am and the boat overruns all the submerged hardware. If the bridal is long, one leg will head under one hull. If the depth is only 10’ or so, the claw may drag on the seafloor, the nylon may foul on something. Basically, the bridal is too long for tidal current switches. If tightened up, it may be shorter than desired. I dont see an automatic hands off solution. Signed: sleepy.Attachment 271154

We shorten our bridle to match the depth to ensure the bridle ends and connection to the chain (in our case a Dyneema climbing sling and Dyneema soft shackle). Sure, in really shallow water the resulting bridle lines are too thick and short for stretching, but we’re counting on the chain weight to keep a bit of give in the system. If the wind picks up then we’ll let out the bridle lines to be long enough for stretch.

It’s not automatic, unless you do like a monohull where the snubber line lies along the length of the deck with only a very short section of non-stretch material over the bow roller. This could be done similarly on a cat, but of course you will still need to adjust the bridle length in really shallow water.