CA cleaned. And cleaned. And cleaned.

It rained much of the weekend.

I managed to drill out four screws and remove one of the mast steps to make it easier to put on a sensible sail cover. There's more to report here in the long run. For now, let me say it was one hour per screw.

Also. Cheap bits break. The titanium nitride (TiN) bits with a 135° tip rock. Even through a ½" of stainless steel. Eventually.

We use a snubber line on our chain. It runs from a bow cleat down to the chain, letting us ease the chain until it hangs loose and this rode takes the strain on cleat and chock instead of directly on the windlass.

We've been using this line for — well — since we started anchoring.

The big steel hook fits nicely over our ⅜" BBB chain. The eye is woven directly to the hook, with not shackle.

The rusty loop used to have a galvanized thimble inside it. The thimble rusted away because it was connected to a stainless shackle at the base of the bobstay, and constantly in contact with stainless steel and saltwater.

After the thimble failed, we moved it up onto the deck. It's easier to monitor, since it's not down under the water handling the chain. The picture doesn't show this, but the line is smaller line than our ⅝" anchor rode. When it was time to replace, I looked for something bigger.

The two hand-woven splices (while messy) have held up well over the years. But. All the messy splices eventually come to an end.

This is the new snubber. The old hook now has a shackle so I don't have to cut the line to get it off. And the loop at the other end is big enough for any cleat on the boat.

It's ⅝″ line, to match the anchor rode. The loops are not spliced in, they're seized. This is much simpler to do, and it appears that seizing can take a fair amount of strain before breaking.

Looking at the Findley's Rope-Works collection of knots (page 17) has an illustration of a loop with three seizings to be sure it always holds.

I'll add a second set of seizings, I think. They're quick to do, and easy to inspect for wear. Findley suggests using "racked" turns closer to the eye. This leads to a "flat" seizing, distinct from the round seizings I've done already. Should be fun.

https://ropeworks.biz/reader/seizing.pdf

BTW. I like Findley's approach slightly better than Brion Toss' approach. Toss starts with an eye and wraps up and then back. Findley starts in the middle and both the initial turns and the riding turns work in the same direction. And with Findley's method, I don't have a weave a tiny eye into the twine.

The big win here is that woven splices are limited to three-strand line. A seizing, however, can be done in either twist or braided line. Rather than learn to splice double braid, I can put in multiple seizings. And replace them as soon as they look sketchy.

(Looking at the picture, I may add a thimble, also.)