On 2004-12-04, Jack Painter wrote:

"Sailman" wrote

BOLT ROPE.

BOLT-ROPE, (ralingue, Fr.) a rope to which the edges or skirts of the
sails are sewed, to strengthen and prevent them from rending. Those
parts of the bolt-rope, which are on the perpendicular or sloping
edges, are called leech-ropes; that at the bottom, the foot-rope; and
that on the top or upper-edge, the head-rope. Stay-sails, whose heads
are formed like an acute angle, have no head-rope. To different parts
of the bolt-rope are fastened all the ropes employed to contract or
dilate the sails.

That's a pretty neat description, unfortunately it has nothing to do with
the use of lines on a boat or ship. Materials that a sailmaker uses in
construction that help to form a finished product and no longer functions in
any way as an individual component are not examples of which we speak.

OK then, man-ropes and footropes (also, I discover, after some research,
called a "horse," but no matter). Both function as ropes. Neither
is installed by a sailmaker. (There *is* another item, called a
footrope, installed by a sailmaker along the foot of the sail. But
the footrope of which I speak is the one under the yard on which
a yardman might stand while furling or reefing a squaresail.)

So Jack's wrong. And I'm wrong too for following up with
a discussion of ropes in an alectronics newsgroup.

I *can* throw in a simple question for the electronics buffs,
though: what's your favorite way to wire a mast in which there
are things halfway up and things at the top (i.e., spreader-lights
and a steaming light about halfway up, masthead tricolor, anchor light,
maybe wind instruments, and VHF antenna at the top. In particular,
how do you handle the ground wiring. You can run a three-wire cable
up to the spreaders and a separate several wire cable up to the
masthead, where the 3-wire cable has GND, STEAM, and SPREADER,
and the masthead has GND, ANCHOR, TRICOLOR, ...

But that involves an extra gound wire. You could also run a "tap"
from a multi-wire cable at the midpoint to provide ground to the
spreader and anchor lights.

ANy thoughts?

--John