Dynamic loads and brait
Being someone in the process of investigating replacing the 3-strand on my primary rode simply because it's too short, I've started taking a good look at brait. The extra elasticity and the compact stowage both appealed to me. I started modeling lots of different scenarios in Alain's 3-strand spreadsheet (dyn_mix.xls from his page referenced at the top of this thread) to see how different lengths of chain would effect ideal scope at different depths, etc. as I was also considering slightly increasing the length of my chain. I was curious to see how the published info for brait would effect the theoretical model, so I emailed Alain to get his thoughts. He was kind enough to work up some spreadsheets with brait's properties in the dynamic model and we both ran some scenarios through it. It would seem that brait would reduce dynamic overtension somewhere in the range of 15-30% (mostly close to 20% depending on conditions,) and cause a slight reduction in angulation for the same scope (I showed about 0.2-0.3 degrees.) Of course, that's no substitute for real world experience, but seems reasonably compelling for my rode choice, even though it looks like it'll cost me 32% more. Anyway, Alain says he doesn't have any plans to post the brait spreadsheets on his site, so if anyone wants a copy of them to run your own scenarios, please PM me.
Colin Sarsfield
S/V Mimi Rose
Blue Hill, Maine
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