Some safety concerns on soft shackles in highline rigs
January 31, 2019
We know a little bit about Dyneema. And during the last 24 hours we received many questions about soft shackles for the connection of webbing pieces in long highlines. Here are some of our concerns, that we want to share with the community:
1.: We have no secure locking mechanism in soft shackles. Race sailors use soft shackles a lot. We come from a harbor city with many sailors, so we asked some: The answer is unanimously: Every then and when a soft shackle simply opens up in difficult situations and the sail gets blown loose. This happens to them, they know it and they have no serious harm from that. But we definitely would have severe damage if a soft shackle fails in a highline rig!
2.: A 1000m highline of 50m pieces needs at least 40 soft shackles from the method shown in Ryan's video. It's like the lottery: If you have one ticket, you have one chance to win. If you have 2, your chances double. So if you have 40 soft shackles in your rig, your chances of a "lottery win" increase by a lot.
3.: Taping. We tried it and are not really convinced. Taping on rope is not really a method that might last throughout multiple days with all weathers. I mean, we all have to reset and retape some paddings every then and when due to movement and weather. So we can't really recommend that, to securely lock soft shackles.
4. Additional splices/knots in the shackle. We know about that but we're not completely convinced about that either - yet. Maybe some further testing is needed here, but our first tries were not as promising as we hoped :/
We hope this helps to answer some of you guys' and girls' questions about that topic.
We put lots of energy in the development of new Dyneema techniques and lots of research in the progress of our community regarding rigging techniques with Dyneema. But at this moment we honestly believe there is a lot more research needed on this issue before any of this should be sold by slackline companies or recommended in highline technique videos.
Stay safe and keep the balance :)
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