Girth hitch dyneema?

[dmonn]

This is about an application on a sailboat. On a jib/Genoa the lines that control it (sheets) are attached to a grommet in the back corner of the sail (clew). Sometimes only a single line is used by girth hitching the line in the middle of the line and the two tails become the sheets. This works on polyester line, but my skipper is wondering if a girth hitch would work with Amsteel. I question if it would slip under load (the sheets on bigger boats can be heavily loaded). My suggestion was to use two separate sheets with Brummel splices, and girth hitch them through the grommet.

What do you guys think?

 

[SeanRuel]

Separate sheets and a soft shackle is what a lot of folks go with

 

[Bart_]

I don't think Vectran is particularly slippery unlike Spectra which is slippery. Are you switching up to lose some elasticity? Is that necessarily a positive change? Are you downsizing the line, if so do you risk earlier fatigue failure by running it relatively harder? Time on my hands.... Gotta consider the overall system.


edit - Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Amsteel was vectran not dyneema/spectra (?)

edit2 - Well I'll be hog tied! It is dyneema. Then which rope is vectran?

edit3 - looks like vectran rope is already popular with the sailing crowd. Two-full-burgers makes it

 

[Brocky]

I think of Vectran as the love child of dyneema and technora.

 

[colb]

Slippery, poor uv resistance, low melting point, light weight, strong tensile strength, low elongation. Not great for sailing, right?

 

[Bart_]

They actually hype the vectran products for use in sailing.

 

[colb]

I was referring to dyneema.

 

[Bart_]

Between the lines my point is suggesting vectran over dyneema in this application. I thought I recalled an open loose braid vectran product say 10 to 15 years ago that I saw in a boating shop, but I must have been mistaken, My experience with spectra is very slippery, hard to trust with anchoring methods.