Replaced Lifelines

I read on Brion Toss’s forum spartalk about using HM (high-modulus) line–amsteel is my brand name of choice right now–for lifelines. This idea appeals for many reasons:

1) Much cheaper–no need to have ends swaged, no need for mini (yet still expensive) turnbuckles

2) Much easier–we can splice the eyes ourselves, and use lashings for the ends, making it simple to maintain them ourselves

3) Stronger–for it’s diameter, stronger than wire

4) Prettier–we used amsteel blue, which nicely matches our boat. It’s unusual to see blue lifelines, and it’s cool.

It took over two weeks to finish this task, working on it an hour or so a day on average.  Mainly because we didn’t have all the materials on hand, then ran out of some stuff, dropped one of the latches in the water, couldn’t decide how we wanted to do the lashings, etc.  But now everything is finished and we’re satisfied with the result.  My only concern is that the blue is going to wash right off the amsteel, and then it won’t look as cool.