I felt out organizational performance was somewhat lacking last year, particularly our sail locker which turned into a giant pile of sailbags, hardware, foul weather gear, a vacuum, a giant pile of dust (the vacuum broke open) rum, Niki's wardrobe, beercans, empty beercans and random other junk. The only logical way to resolve this problem was with a really expensive piece of rope, hence our PBO hanging shelf! The support on this shelf is 6.3mm PBO, which gives that part of our shelf a 17500lb break, which I think gives us a nice safety margin for beers. We _could_theoretically go with a "heavier" beer than Coors Light, but I'm not sure we should push it.
Seriously though, I had a PBO F40 jib halyard that was essentially useless, as the cover was torn in a couple spots exposing the core. If you haven't used PBO rope before, it's a very strong, very low stretch fiber, but breaks down when exposed to light or water (great thing to have on a boat right?) Well, after cutting up samples for rigging clinics and destructive testing, I was still left with a 20' piece of PBO that couldn't be used in any critical situation, so naturally it became a shelf.
Also updated 88's jib sheets. The sheets we had last year were nice, but a little bit too short for poling out the jib downwind, so I wanted to add about 10' . This was naturally a good time to try out some new 2010 ropes and I cut a piece of Alpha Ropes K-Mix for these sheets. Got to say, I love this rope! It's a very grippy cover over a very tight core. Takes a little bit of extra time to taper and splice, but the finished product is very nice to handle and runs well through blocks. The latter characteristic was pretty important, since the Harken 29mm blocks top out at 8mm line, so the tapers have to be perfect or your jib sheets will hang up in tacks. You can also see the final setup for the jib cleat, the clew blocks and shackle and the jib car.
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