Tidy lines with a splice
Roger Hughes declutters the cockpit by splicing his furling lines end-to-end into a continuous loop
How to splice a continuous loop for a furling drum line
Rope is used to rotate nearly all furling drums and some – such as Code 0 sail furlers and the old Hood in-mast system – employ a continuous line.
On my brigantine schooner Britannia, the French-made Facnor furling drivers on the mainsail and fore-course squaresail are operated by long ropes that pass once around the rotating drum and out the other side, then back to the cockpit.
They use a 3/8in (10mm), doublebraided line to grip the driver, much like the jaws on a self-tailing winch, which in turn rotates the mandrel (foil) to wind the sails in and out.
My mainsail needs 16 rotations of the driver and the squaresail needs 19. Using a single line therefore results in a very long tail on one end or the other, whether the sails are furled or unfurled; the squaresail tail is 45ft long and the mainsail 35ft. These lines all lead back to the cockpit and, with the addition of two headsails and between-mast staysail furling lines, it can become very cluttered.
It would be a great improvement if these long lines could be made into a continuous loop, with only a few feet in the cockpit to go round the winches. Then I could just wind away, without having to coil yards of rope to keep the area tidy.
Considerations
There are different methods to make a continuous (or end-to-end) loop with double braided line, described in rope-maker manuals and web videos, but they result in a splice that is thicker than the rest of the rope, and may not pass around the jaws of drum drivers or through clutches, blocks and self-tailing winches, with serious possibilities of a rope jam. Therefore any continuous splice needs to be no thicker than the rest of the rope. Needless to say, the splice also has to be very strong.
After a lot of experimentation and testing, I finally arrived at a satisfactory method to splice two ends of a double braided rope, with the line remaining a uniform thickness throughout.
NOTE: when splicing a continuous loop rope it must first be rove through any closed sheaves, pulleys, or clutches – it can’t be threaded through afterwards.
Tools
A special fid called a Splicing Wand makes this splicing process very easy. It was invented by the late Brion Toss, a renowned rigger from Seattle, US.
It consists of a 14in long, thin hollow stainless-steel tube, with a handle on one end and a smooth slotted opening on the other. A strong, thin line passes through
the tube and makes a loop on the end to grip a splice tail, which is then held securely with the knob on the handle. The tail can then be pulled through the cover, which is the opposite of using a normal fid that must be pushed through with a pusher rod. The wand is also a great improvement on a thin wire line puller. The only other tools needed are a sharp knife and a method to heat seal the rope ends.
Simply put, the splice is formed by interlacing the cover and core inside each other in opposite directions, then lockstitching them at both ends and centre.
Strength
As with any splice you do, it would be reassuring to know its strength relative to the tensile strength of the original rope. Tensile strength is the load on which a new rope can be expected to break when tested on approved rope testing equipment.
The 3/8in double braided polyethylene line I used is supposed to have a tensile strength of between 3,000 and 4,460lb – depending on which manufacturer’s tables you look at.
I had one of my continuous splices tested by Miami Cordage, a Florida commercial rope maker that supplies the US Navy and makes all types of rope. They have a massive 40ft-long hydraulic testing rig which can stretch any rope to destruction, including the massive hawsers used to moor aircraft carriers.
My puny 10ft piece of string, with the splice in the middle, was stretched until the splice eventually parted at 2,031lb.
This is far more than the torque required to rotate the drivers on my two sails, even when they are pulling hard, and both splices have performed flawlessly thus far.
The loop has greatly simplified the operation of furling the mainsail and squaresail and I now have a much neater cockpit – and two long lengths of spare rope with which to practise my knots and splices.
WARNING: It is inadvisable to use any type of spliced rope for personal safety attachments, such as a bosun’s chair or safety harness. This is because any buried splice, such as the Class 1 eye splice, cannot be inspected. It is far better to join these types of lines by tying using an appropriate knot.
‘Simply put, the splice is formed by interlacing the cover and core inside each other in opposite directions’