Thimbles needed in Dyneema Lifelines

[rroberts]

I'm using 5/16" T-900 for my lifelines, with a breaking strength of about 7300 lb. and a Factor of Safety of 15, it gives me a Safe Working Load of about 500 lb., so for me (the heaviest person on the boat) that's about 2.2 g's I can be thrown into them at.

Anyway, for thimbles, I used Bainbridge's 5/16" wire rope hearts, they're big but have a large radius, these are then french lashed to the terminals with 1/8" single braid Amsteel. For the cockpit lifelines, I'm splicing directly to the Johnson terminals. As the Working Rope book notes, a tight radius is bad, and as Brion noted in this thread, you can ring hitch on, but the radius on the line in the ring hitch is still as tight, if not tighter, than the splice for the Johnson hardware. To hold a more open radius, once the splice is finished, I'm serving over the radius with Robline Whipping Twine 08. I'm also serving over the lifeline in way of the stanchions to provide some additional chafe protection as well as prevent rust and staining. Done up with whipping twine the same color as the line flecking, it looks pretty sharp.

Ryan