Soft Shackles and an Improved Deck Bucket

[John Stone]

I selectively and carefully incorporated dyneema and it’s heat treated cousin Dynex Dux into the rebuilt Far Reach. I used Dux for the forestay and later modified it with a quick release pendant. The link to how we made the forestay releaseable can be found here. https://farreachvoyages.wordpress.com/2 ... se-device/

We also use dyneema for our lifelines and various shackles with and without toggles. The dyneema has performed very well. We continue to find ways to use dyneema in a manner that suits our philosophy of reliability, simplicity, and self sufficiency.

While I still have plans to make a canvas deck bucket we currently use and are happy with a black rubber utility bucket. It has proven to be very tough. We initially removed the steel bail and replaced it with two small SS shackles and a spliced rope handle. It worked well, but the SS shackles sometimes made contact with the topside paint when hauling water up to the deck. To solve this problem I replaced the shackles with 3/16” dyneema soft shackles. They are simple to make taking about 15 minutes each. There is now nothing hard on the bucket to damage the boat or paint. And they are quickly detachable if required.

I made a two more soft shackles from some left over 1/4” dyneema to serve as shackles for a couple of leathered Shafer blocks I plan to incorporate as secondary fairleads for the jib sheets. The purpose of the blocks is to ensure the sheets don’t make contact with the varnished teak winch bases. Various test have shown the dyneema soft shackles and easy to tie diamond knots to be very strong. One test determined the break strength of 1/4” dyneema with improved diamond knot at 8000 lbs! Incorporating a harder to tie button knot increased the break strength to a staggering 12,000 lbs!

There are unlimited ways to incorporate dyneema into our boats. If you have not experimented with this amazing line I encourage you to give it a test ride. There are lots of articles and online tutorials that will walk you through the basics.