On Jun 16, 11:55 am, "Roger Long" wrote:
It's hardly a trivial question. Getting the twist out of lines so that they
don't do this when a load is put on is hard. The snags can hurt you or your
boat if they occur somewhere more critical. Suppose the dinghy was your
only way to reach someone in the water because other devices had drifted
away from them?

If you just take the line as it came from the store and run it through the
blocks this will probably happen.

First, learn to coil properly. Take the new line and start coiling it up, a
real coil, hanging from one hand and measuring with the other; not winding
around thumb and elbow the way all former girl scouts seem to do. Twist the
rope between thumb and forefinger so that each loop hangs exactly parallel
and easy with the one before it. With new line, you'll find that the twists
build up so you have to stop periodically and whip the uncoiled part around
and around in the other direction to work the twist out. Don't accept any
tendency for the loops to look like they are trying to go into a figure
eight. You may have to go through this process a few times.

For lines as short as davit falls, you might also hoist the line up the mast
with a halyard and work the twist out. I've heard that towing them astern
for a while works wonders but I've never done it.

You'll probably still have some tendency to twist under load even after all
this. It sounds like you have swivel blocks on your davits. There is
really no need for them to swivel in this applications. Replace them with
non swivel blocks or put a siezing of wire or marlin around the block and
shackle so they can't turn.

Another thing that can easily happen with something like dinghy davits is
for the block to get turned over when disconnected. It can be a maddening
mental exercise to figure out which way it should go back if it twists
through the parts. Try hooking the two blocks directly together after
disconnecting the dinghy. This will also help keep them from swinging
around.

--
Roger Long

Don't you have to reverse the twist for every other loop, or you are
creating twists in the line ? I just do a figure 8 loop instead.

Todd