NE dinghy tow rope

[Clyde Jenkins]

I have made a splice in NER's dinghy tow rope. As I recall it was a bit more difficult that Sta-Set. Brion has a cheat that he describes in the Rigger's Apprentice for nylon double braid. He suggests "pulling the core yarn out one-half the length of the cover tail from the spike." This is versus one third the length of the cover tail. I think I used this cheat when I made my splice.

I have found that if I am truly wrestling with finishing the splice it's better to back up, take the splice apart, check all my measurements, possibly cheat as above, and try again.

Yellow polypropylene rope or its ski tow rope variants have only one good characteristic -- they float. Derby rope is available in most hardware stores. It too is polypropylene, but it uses finer fibers. It's not spliceable, but it does seem to have more than a one year life. It also warns you when the UV damage is severe by shedding little, fine broken pieces of fiber. I used derby rope on our dinghy for about 3 years.

After discarding the derby rope, I've been using NER's dinghy tow rope for about 3 years with no apparent degradation except fading colors in the cover.

Clyde