Jackstays and safety tips
our excellent magazine has landed promptly on the mat as usual, and on flicking through it initially I noticed the letter on tether safety. This is a subject that I was going to write to you about and say more or less the same thing! I regularly sail solo on our Sadler 29, and take safety lines and tethering very seriously for obvious reasons. I too take a line at a higher level, i.e. over the sprayhood to the mast instead of conventional deck jackstays, as I consider this to be by far the safest method. Unlike Peter Tabori however, I take the line from a D-ring near the cockpit floor, and rather than take it to the forestay (I don’t need to go on to the foredeck anyway), I take it round the mast in a single loop and back to another D-ring on the opposite side of the cockpit. In open seas, while in the cockpit, I always clip into one of the D-rings anyway, and when I do need to go forward,
