Halyard to sail attachment with Finish Line

[Dan Lehman]

Originally Posted by Firebrick43

Hello all,
I have experience with ... whipping and ...
I am trying to... make an easy-to-undue attachment on my new to me 15' mutineers halyard.
...
Read some where about putting a stopper knot on the end of the line an then whipping and seizing a small loop of slightly smaller rope to the halyard to act as a shackle and this apeals to me except worry about stuctually the whipping and seizing of a structural part to a rope like this, I have not done. Is this even recommended? If so can some one recommend where to view instuctions for this kind of whipping?

Other hardware less and easy to unbent ideas welcome. Hard-to-untie knots can't be used as a 70-year-old neighbor uses or sails with me and doesn't have the finger strength
Thank you
Jay

Well, Jay, how about easy-to-undue knots?

Tying the line to the sail directly --am I missing something (maybe!)--
with a bowline should be that (easily undone).

But it occurs to me that you could work in this and a stopper to boot:

1) Make a bowline with a stoppered tail (I'd use Ashley's stopper, well set,
as it's nicely/uniformly bulky in stopper face), and the eye long enough
to run through the attachment point and back to the knot nub;

2) seize the eye a little ways off from the knot nub (leaving a sort of
*slot* between seizing & nub, which you'll then ...) ;

3) after reeving the eye through the attachment point, bring the eye tip
back up through the "slot" and put it around the stoppered tail.

The stopper should keep the bowline tied (when untensioned)
and serves to anchor the attachment as described above.

Seizing can be done a variety of ways. (I'd clamp on with mason line
or stout nylon monofilament and an extended strangle knot, but that's me. )

By seizing as described rather than trying to make a small eye (tip)
just big enough to go around the stopper but not TOO big to pull off,
one gets the constraints on pull off in the eye legs and has an easier
on/off placement of the eye tip.

And I imply that the only "knot" needing untying by any fingers is
the removal of the eye tip from around the stopper --that all else
remains (semi-permanent), just as a splice eye would.

One can think of many variations on this theme of a knotted structure!

(And the challenge of "non-spliceable" coarsely braided line is tempting, too!)


--dl*
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