8th May

In Horta today so popped into the marina to check my little fishing boat and admire Clarisse's IMOCA.

Chatted to a team member and hopefully her bulkhead will be fixed for a Friday restart. I take my hat of to these super human skippers.

Weather going dry for some time (hopefully) so my tractor ventured out from storage.  Rigged up scale and did some testing.

First pull was on 3mm Chineema with an eye splice on each end connected with  BIG shackles. 20mm pin diameter.  (not in this photo)

BIG bang over the limit of my scale.  1039kg!!

Then rigged up a 2 to 1 tackle system for the cable and 6mm Chineema tests. Hydraulics peaked at just over 1050kg on the scale and did nothing to the 5mm ss strop with a copper sleeve with thimble on one end and wire splice with copper sleeve over the tail without thimble on the other -  both ends connected with 10mm ss shackles.  6mm strop with copper sleeves on thimbles on each end also stalled out my hydraulics.  6mm Chineema with very short buried tapers and eye splice on each end and connected with 20mm shackle pins also stalled out hydraulics.  I estimate there was at least 2000kg force applied (doubling up the scale readings.)

What was interesting is the thimbles got squashed and I bent the pin in the 10mm shackle.  

These are all the bits I tested.  I am happy that the cheap hydraulic crimper seems to do the job very well with no slip or movement in the sleeves.  I did not do a pretty job of the crimping as it is a 3 handed job but will borrow Mrs Nuts for the final crimping.  I hit the 6mm Chineema with a hammer when under heavy tension and it was like hitting solid steel.  Very impressed. 

I might ask a friend with a monster tractor to break the strops without the scale (dont want to break it) just to see where they come apart.  Could probably lift up 3 of these boats with just 1 cable!