Hello all...
Background:
I am going to be re-rigging my gaff cutter with Dux (9mm) and am currently embroiled in how to terminate the shrouds at deck level. The current setup is traditional(ish) deadeyes and lanyards, but the upper deadeyes are made from boxed heart wood (not sure on the species) and has some decent checking. I would like wither make or buy a replacement. One of the option is just to buy some lignum/ipe/locust and mill them up myself, but then I got thinking on the possibility of raw lashings through very beefy, cast SS thimbles.
I know that the new 12-meter gaffer Kate is rigged with SS shrouds, terminated with stay-lok eyes onto big shackles. They are then lashed to deck with (presumably) HM lanyards through the rounded end of the shackle. This method seems for work well enough for a 12-meter racer... I wonder of its applicability to much smaller craft? My boat (October) is a ~10 ton gaff cutter with 750 sq ft of working sail.
The actual question:
Given the use of HM lanyards and beefy, cast thimbles (such as
these ), what are the engineering differences between using just lanyards (lashings) for shrouds and deadeyes and lanyards?
Is the main difference the chafe of the lines against themselves within the heart? If so, one might assume that the very tough HM lines would alleviate much of that problem...
Is it that, generally, stamped thimbles are not strong enough to support the rigging loads of lager craft, and thus traditionally one would need a beefy chunk of wood to take the compression strain? (Leather seems make this point in the Gaff Rig Handbook limiting simple lashings to craft of less than 300 sq ft of sail)
So, I am thinking heavily of using an oversized thimble like the ones linked above (with enough radius for a ~5 x diameter bend for the shroud), and lashing through that at the end of my shrouds with a HM line with a cover (dyneema, amsteel, vectran, dynex, something...). any thoughts on what I am missing what why it may be a bad idea?