Soft snap blocks

[Stumble]

Just curious if anyone has used a soft shackles as a snatch block? A friend destroyed his $500 snatch block (3000lbs wl, 6000lbs breaking) barber hauling out the jib tonight, and I got to thinking that just wrapping a soft shackle around the jib sheet might work.

Of course the sheet would have to deal with a bit of friction as it ran through the loop formed, but I think the slipperiness of the dyneema might allow it to work fine.

Alternatively I was thinking of whipping a thimble (with the legs pulled apart a bit) onto the soft shackle to give the sheet somewhere to run against that would reduce friction. This is similar to the colligio static lead blocks, but with only a half circle instead of the whole thing.


Any thoughts would be appreciated.