* Capt. JG wrote, On 3/16/2007 1:56 AM:

I'm in a single berth... barely enough for the 10 foot beam of the boat.

I inherited them on my old boat and they made sense on a few of the
docklines. Where the distance is small, say under 5 feet, there is
not enough room for the stretch of nylon to take affect, but the
geometry sometimes means the short runs need the most stretch..

On the catamaran, every dockline has 20 to 30 feet from the deck to
the dock cleat, so there's plenty of room for stretch, and the boat
can move a fair amount without stressing any line. Also, the cat
doesn't do the nasty dock roll that seems to kill dock lines the fastest.

BTW, I also had a snubber on the mainsheet of the Nonsuch - it came in
handy when jibing.