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Equipment care

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Avoid knots, as they reduce the breaking strength of a line
Knots weaken the rope in which they are made. When knotted rope is strained to its breaking point, it almost always fails at the knot or close to it, unless it is defective or damaged elsewhere. The bending, crushing, and chafing forces that hold a knot in place also unevenly stress rope fibres and ultimately lead to a reduction in strength.

Extending the lives and serviceability of padlocks on a boat
General purpose padlocks are subject to harsh conditions on boats causing them to corrode and seize.

Avoiding damage to halyard Nicopress's and masthead sheaves
Despite the fact that a headsail only needs to be tightened enough to get the wrinkles out of the luff there is a general sailing tendency to grind in halyards until they cannot be tightened anymore. With this sort of predilection it can be very easy to over tighten and pull the halyards nicropress into the masthead sheaves, the nicropress being the crimped copper or stainless fitting that form eyes on wire rigging, particularly for small ΒΌ inch wires and less, that have become known by the proprietary Nicropress manufacturer's name.

Preventing line chafe
If a fibre line is loaded up and exposed to an edge, or anything rough or sharp, the back-and-forth rubbing motion exerted upon this point will cause the line to chafe in two. All running rigging (ropes leading through various blocks, and to different places of the masts, sails, tacks etc) are subject to chafe, be they halyards, topping lifts, leech-lines, bow-lines, down-haulers or furling lines on roller reefing gear. Sails themselves cause chafe in light inconsistent airs when they are not setting properly or in light conditions with a lumpy or rolling sea. These situations cause a sail to be pulling well for a few minutes, but when a roll comes through or the wind dies, the drive is knocked out of the sail causing it to slap around uselessly chafing itself and everything in its immediate orbit. The jib furling line on a roller reefing unit is particularly susceptible to chafe. Although it may appear to be belayed and motionless it is constantly subject to a slight loading-and-unloading back-and-forth movement as the headsail strains and or the vessel bow crests and falls off waves and swells.


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