Hello,
I've just completed doing this on my Tanzer 22. The Tanzer has a cabintop handrail at the aft end of the cabin (front end of the cockpit) which is where the cabintop lifelines terminate, as well as the cockpit lifelines. So I needed four sections.
I used 3/16" Amsteel (the gray stuff) which cost me cdn$0.95 per foot. Terminations in my setup, first for the cabintop (fixed) lifelines:
- Ring hitch to the eye on the pulpit. Make the eye large enough to pass the stanchions through, or you'll need to use a lashing or a shackle or something.
- Eye with thimble at the aft end, attached to the handrail with a lashing, terminated with french hitching.
The cockpit lifelines (with a shackle) are more complicated:
- Fixed shackle (i.e. no swivel) with a metal thimble, this clips on to the cabintop handrail and releases for access to the cockpit.
- Once again, eye with a thimble at the aft end, attached with a lashing and french hitching.
Some "gotchas" that may save you some grief:
- All my splices were Mobius Brummels with a tapered bury, one yarn extracted (like a marker yarn in the double-braid eyesplice) and used to lock-stitch the splice.
- The Splicing Wand makes life much easier. I've done close to 20 splices in the past week, replacing my running rigging and lifelines. I figure I've got my money's worth
.
- If splicing on a closed shackle with a Mobius Brummel, you NEED to have access to both ends of the line. You can't do the funny collapse-the-eye-and-it-reappears trick that Brion mentions in the Apprentice and Book 5. It's a long bit of line to pull through, but there's no way around it. Also, make sure you do this BEFORE splicing a thimble into the other end. Guess how I figured this out?
- Ring hitches in Amsteel may tend to open up a bit if there's no tension on them, altering the overall length a bit. For this reason, I only used one on the fixed lifeline. I have a thimble at both ends of the removable cockpit lifeline.
- Exact lengths are very difficult to splice, at least for me. I sized my Amsteel lifelines about 6" shorter than the vinyl-covered-stainless ones, and they still ended up only about 2" short of the length I require. Having them a bit short allows you to fine-tune the length using a lashing at one end. If you splice them too long, you've got a problem. Cutting off the eyesplice (with a 48- or 72-diameter bury) will leave them too short to do another splice, so you're then looking at buying a whole new length of amsteel for that side of the boat.
- I saw no reason to go with the fancy Johnson hardware. A lashing is as adjustable as a turnbuckle, costs less, and weighs less. As for the gate hardware, I couldn't justify usd$50 each for an over-center snap shackle with swivel. My lifelines don't rotate
, so I figured a strong-enough fixed shackle would work just as well.
Hope this helps,
Michel Goudeseune
Tanzer 22 #2104 "Brave and Crazy"
http://tanzer22.org/