Making a towing bridle

[RoyB]

I need to make a towing bridle for our boat (to be towed, not to tow others) - it's required for some ocean racing we'll be doing. I can splice 3 and 12 strand using several techniques so the required splicing doesn't trouble me but the basic design does.

The boat is a 38 foot offshore capable racing fractional sloop weighing 5800 kilos. There is a single cleat on the foredeck but I wouldn't trust it's strength or mounting for a tow.

The mast is keel stepped and very solid where it passes through the deck. There are 2 solidly mounted winches per side that could possibly be used. There are also 2 cabin top winches that are less solidly mounted - altho to be fair they're mounted well enough to tension 10mm vectran halyards to violin string tightness.

I'm thinking that I either need to fabricate a Y shaped bridle that connects to the main sheet winches using spliced loops and that has the 2 legs meeting forward of the bow so that the legs can pass through the pulpit.

The alternative is to make something in a Y shape that can be connected to the 2 ends of a heavy webbing strop that is wrapped around the mast several times. If I did this I could also wrap a line around the mast and lead each end back to the cabin top winches to stiffen the whole thing up.

Never having made one of these I'm worried that I'll make something pretty that won't work well at sea if we need it.

Who better to ask than the Spartalk crowd?