New bridle in place
Do you have a contingency for when anchor your bridle fails? How quickly can you get a back up bridle on in 40kts in the middle of the night in your PJs...???
Our original anchor bridle (Helia Evo 2018) snapped in the early hours of the morning in a 30kts rain squall in St Martin. We were already onto our 3rd shackle (only one of those in the middle of the night...) and had planned to replace the whole bridle at next haul out in a couple of months time. The line snapped right through on the port side, directly above the central knot which surprised us. I had noticed a tiny little bit of chafe on the outer casing in the area where it snapped, where the two lines are touching above the central knot, but it was seriously tiny and superficial.
The starboard side held us while we jury rigged a back up. Anyway thanks to FP Owners FB group, and the legendary Cote Mar (gone but not forgotten) we were quickly able to design, purchase parts and install a new anchor bridle (whilst at anchor in only 25kts). Based on feedback from the same FB forum on some short-comings of our bridle design, we were able to design bridle 3.0 ready for when the time came to replace 2.0.
For version 2.0 of our bridle:
We went for 18mm laid line, which has more give than the plaited. We also added snubbers. These absorb the shock of those sudden gusts and also seem to reduce the speed and "violence" of those side to side movements. It is also quieter as we don't have the creaking and groaning noise when we pull back hard on the anchor. It is a different feel when setting the anchor, but we are getting used to that.
We chose a Wichard hook, which we have been really happy with and shackled it onto the bridle. The hook shared by Rob Birch to the FP FB Group also looked pretty good and we had one made up and tried it, but found we prefer the clip.
We used an overhand knot to join the two sides, much the same design as the original bridle. We found some chafe occurred around this knot. We also tied the bridle to the eyes on the cross beam, but found this was an area subject to chafe as well and eventually went through one strand of the line.
For version 3.0 of our bridle:
We again went for 18mm laid line and snubbers. Although the snubbers recommend 3 wraps we went for 2 wraps, otherwise its alot of strain on the snubber and risks breaking it. It still gives enough dampening though. Its tricky to get the length of line correct, allowing for the line around the snubbers, knot and splices. There will also be some stretch as everything gets some load on it and settles in.
The knot is an Alpine Butterfly knot which is a much squarer, flatter knot than the overhand, and doesn't take away as much strength from the lines as an overhand knot. Its a great way of creating a loop in the middle of a line and is popular with climbers. Others advocate splicing the join but we were happy to go with the knot.
Rather than tying the bridle to the cross beam, this time we spliced in some thimbles and shackled the bridle on to the eyes at the cross beam. This should avoid any issues with chafe.
We have kept the remains of bridle 2.0 to use as an emergency back up, in case we need to deploy it at 2am...
Ready to go, just need to add the clip
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Alpine butterfly knot
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