Splicing halyards and making soft hanks

Gryphon is getting a new mainsail and genoa made out of a composite material that does not stretch.  This material was once only used for racing sails, but they claim to now make them durable enough for ocean passages and cruising.  To get the most out of the new sails I have made new halyards and sheets out of rope with less stretch than double-braid, the material my old stiff halyards are made of.  This non-stretch, lightweight (aka expensive) rope has to be spiced in different ways because, unlike double braid rope in which both the core and the cover contribute to the strength, these high-tech ropes are built of an incredibly strong core material and the cover is simply for protection.  I spliced an eye in the halyards with a core to core splice.  I spliced an eye at the end of the genoa and Solent sheets by first stripping the cover off the last 10 feet of the line then I put a brummel eye splice at the end.

Gryphon is also getting a Solent sail which will be set on a stay running parallel to and just behind the furled genoa.  The Solent stay is made of a rope called Dyneema which is just as strong as wire and which will stow easily when I want to use the genoa.  To hank the Solent to the stay I have built soft shackles.  These will chafe the Dyneema stay less than bronze hanks and will save weight aloft.

Construction
I never had much luck with fids but I had a break-thru after coming across the splicing wand and instructional videos by Brion Toss.  Prior to this project I had used his tool to make double-braid eye splices.  I followed his instructions for the core to core splice, also known as a class II.

Splices work like a Chinese finger trap -- the harder the pull the harder it grips.  By the same principle, during construction they must be kept loose.  Brion Toss encourages to "massage, massage, massage" which is great advice because it keeps everything loose.  Sometimes I can tell where things are too tight, but it can be difficult to tell and working the entire rope gets to all the places where material is getting pinched and preventing assembly.  When I was trying to force a fid, I ran into problems with the cover getting too tight. I am able to keep things looser with the wand than I had been able to with a fid, but I started following his advice only after I bought the wand.

Finished core to core.  Empty cover has not yet
been cut off

I should have bought longer ropes because I made some mistakes and had to cut the rope.  I had five halyards that needed splices.  I think I did a total of 18 splices, wasting a couple feet each time.  At one point I wrote to Brion Toss with a picture to illustrate my problem and much to my surprise we had a pleasant email conversation that led to my better understanding. He helped me find two things I was doing wrong.  I was starting my taper too early and I was not pulling the eye made by the core through the cover far enough.  When I finally got it right I did a new one on each halyard.

In this picture you see the cover forming an eye with two legs.  One leg is thick and straight, the other is limp.  The core (which you cannot see) comes up the straight leg, goes around the eye, then goes back into the stright leg.  The core is buried within itself inside the straight leg.  The limp leg gets cut off, then you need to do something to finish it off.  I used a whipping.

For the sheets, the primary goal was to eliminate the need for a bowline at the attachment to the clew.  I have a lot of things to snag on the foredeck and the bowlines catch them all.  I chose to use a long Dyneema loop and attach it with a cow hitch (aka luggage tag).  To do so I stripped the cover off the end of the sheet.  The construction is simple.  I used Premium Ropes.  You must determine the shortest distance from the clew to the winch, because stripped line will not hold in a winch. I created the eye with a brummel splice which locks into itself and then buried in itself.

The picture shows the white cores which run inside the green covers and the blue cores which run inside the white cover with blue fleck (barely visible).

An additional benefit of this design is that the last section of line will weigh down the clew less, especially since the core does not hold water, but the cover does

I ran across a clean way to do reeving eyes on sail anarchy.   The eyes in these pictures are just cover.  Before tucking the cover, draw out some core.  After tucking, draw the core back in and it will lay on top of the tucked cover.  A whipping then holds it all together.

 The essential part of soft shackle construction was to make them all have the same inside diameter under load.  I read that their reliability is dependent on the stopper knot.  I used the D-splicer video and the Diamond knot video at Premium Ropes.  I tried to tighted the knot evenly with an awl, then used a table vice to draw them tight.  The vice made could make them 1/2" - 3/4" longer





Line choices
Main and genoa halyards:  Robline Coppa 5000 9mm, chosen because Technora cover and it does non-slip in clutches
Genoa halyard:  no snap shackle attached as this will secure head of genoa on furler and will seldom be dropped.  The screw shackle will more dependable offshore.
Spinnaker, Solent and Staysail halyards New England Ropes Endura Braid 8mm
Genoa Sheets: Endura Braid 10mm because it will be handled a lot
Solent sheets:  Marlow Club 10mm because Endura is expensive
Soft shackles:  3/16" Dyneema

Essential tools

Essential tools.
Good scissors save a lot of tedium
A small awl and learn how to do a Marlingspike hitch to draw whipping tight.
Splicing wand.  I held it suspended horizontally in a table vise.
I did not buy the D-Splicer but made my own.  Tim from Sailcrafters showed me how, using a wire bent in half with the two legs stuck into a halyard stopper ball that is then filled with epoxy (blue ball in picture).
My wife suggested I use the sailing gloves which were a Godsend in avoiding blisters when working the cover back over the core.