How vintage sailing hardware saved my house

I was sorting through my treasures the other day. OK, they’re not really treasures. That’s the word my first mate (and first wife) uses facetiously when she needles me about possessing so much sailing stuff. It’s true that in a lifetime of sailing I have accumulated a substantial collection of sailboat gear, hardware, gadgets and widgets. Substantial enough, in fact, to fill a room in a warehouse. The room once seemed ample, but is now bursting at the seams because in spite of the abuse I have to take for being a nautical pack rat, I don’t think it’s prudent to part with perfectly good sailing equipment, even if it is a little outmoded. Someday I might have a use for the fog bell I acquired in 1972 but never installed.

As I was saying, I was taking inventory of my collection, and it occurred to me that it represents a tangible history of the development of sailboat equipment in the second half of the 20th century. I came across, for example, a snapshackle from a jib sheet for a 40-foot boat built in the 1960s. It has about the size and heft of a .38 police special revolver. This chromed bronze monster probably weighs more than half a dozen of its sleek, compact, stainless steel counterparts of today.

Then I took a fond look at my matched pair of snatch blocks from the 1970s. These bronze, rubber-clad behemoths make the lightweight stainless and urethane models I now use look like toys. They have the approximate combined weight of a bowling ball.

I recalled that these husky fellows once saved my house. When a do-it-yourself tree removal project went awry and a partially sawn-through, 60-foot ash tree threatened to crash into the general area of the master bedroom, the blocks, attached to nearby trees, rove with an old afterguy (5/8-inch Dacron!) attached to a pickup truck, averted the disaster. I rest my case about the wisdom of saving vintage sailing gear.

Back in the warehouse, I upended one the canvas ditty bags I use to store small hardware pieces. One of the items that tumbled out was a brass device shaped like a question mark with a piston closure on one side and a slot for seizing on the other.

Does this ring any bells? Can you identify this object? Anyone who answers yes qualifies as an old salt. Most young salts won’t have a clue.

It was a hank, once used to attach headsails to headstays and forestays. Hanks, of course, haven’t been standard equipment on offshore boats for decades, though smaller versions of them are still used on some one-design boats.

I’m afraid I can’t summon much nostalgia for hanks. As a member in my youth of the brotherhood of the bow, I was delighted to see them replaced by grooved headstay systems. A big-boat headsail could have 30 or more hanks. Attaching and detaching them was such a slow and tedious process that sail changes were avoided at almost all costs. This was no favor to the foredeck crew. In an increasing breeze, putting off the inevitable only meant that it was eventually performed in truly wretched conditions.

The drill was to drag the new sail, with its freight of brass on the luff, forward, attach and stack the hanks at the base of the stay. Then drop the old sail and furiously detach its hanks, taking care not to open the hanks of the new sail which, since the operation was freqently performed at night and mostly under water, could be indistinguishable from the old. Then, finally, up with the new sail.

In spite of such aggravation, a few baggywrinkle-bound traditionalists cling to their hanks. This may be because they don’t trust new-fangled (in use for some 30 years) grooved systems. Oddly enough, our racing authority doesn’t seem to trust them either. The Offshore Racing Council requires heavy weather jibs made for grooves to have grommets so they can be laced on the headstay as a precaution.

I’ve never seen a properly loaded headsail pull out of a groove system. On the other hand, I once saw every single hank pull out of a jib during a memorable storm, turning the sail that was supposed to be a flat blade for near survival conditions into a sort of billowing gollywobbler.

As the snapshackles and snatchblocks, not to mention my tonnage of heavy-metal winch handles, demonstrate, the progression of sailing equipment has been from heavy to ever lighter. Look at rope.

There are jib sheets (1970s) in my collection that look like hawsers from the QE2. Even halyards from the beginning of the high-tech rope era (early 1990s), made of Kevlar and 5/16-inch galvanized wire, seem better suited for an industrial than a yachting application. They make the uncovered Spectra and Technora we use now look like kite string.

One strange exception to the heavier-to-lighter trend is safety equipment. As life-saving gear, the old safety harnesses (1970s) in my inventory, with their flimsy webbing, 3/8-inch Nylon rope tethers and wimpy snap hooks, were a sick joke. When I scavenged one of the snap hooks for a dog leash, it deformed on the mutt’s first lunge.

I’m making up new leash now from a length of old foreguy. For the business end, I think I’ll use one of those stout hanks.

That should fit in nicely with other homely uses of sailboat gear visible around our place. The aforementioned dog spends his days tethered to a ball-bearing block (1992) running on a 120-foot long rope and stainless steel wire halyard (1986). Water discharged by a sump pump travels through a pipe made from an aluminum spinnaker pole (1990). A slightly damaged carbon fiber model (1994) stands by as a replacement when needed. Tomato plants in the garden are supported by sail ties.

Maybe the first mate is right. These are treasures.