It's been a really light summer for racing, so both blocks didn't really see much in the way of wear, but they both look about the same as when installed. This includes Ronstans dyneema link soft attachment.
Holding power: the Ronstan is defintiely grippier on our 8mm New England Flightline spin sheets, in fact it's a little bit too grippy in really light air, which is our principle problem with it. The Ronstan is switchable, so in theory we could turn off the rathet, but in practice we did that once, although it disengaged my accident at least one time. The rest of time, the ratchet engages with too little load, and holds on too tight. This was moderately annoying in light air gybes, but caused a few very slow takedowns when the rathet would grip the sheet while we were trying for a port douse.
The Harken's auto engagement is adjsutable, but we left it in whatever the stock setting is and had no issues with the holding power.
If we were in a heavy air venue, maybe it would be different, but for now I think the Harken is the better choice for spinnaker sheets on the boat.
We're going to swap the Ronstan ratchet into our 2:1 jib sheet system for another comparison. I think it may fare better there, as it does have more "grip" and the extra snagginess will be less of an issue on the jib since its both higher load and less travel.
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