Mates: Here's the kind of tip you keep in the back of your head so you can retrieve it quickly if necessary in an emergancy. Yesterday a friend of mine called me from the lauching ramp. Unfortunately, it was not the lauching ramp where his trailer was parked. He told me he had broken a turnbuckle and needed a ride to his trailer or West Marine. I've never seen a open turnbuckle brake but I grabbed my sail boat hardware tool box and drove to the ramp. Sure enough the turnbuckle had snapped on one side. There are a couple of ways I could have "Jerry Rigged" it so he could motor back to the ramp (actually he could have sailed back if he had wanted to). One way would have been to attach a block to the deck attachment with a shackle and then tie a line to a secure part of the turnbuckle. Next, I'd have run the line to a winch and then take up the slack with the winch. I did not have an extra block with me and neither did he. I could have taken one from one of the sail trim controls but I decided on a simplier method. I secured one end of a line to the top of the turnbuckle and ran the end of the line through the shackle I had attached to the deck plate. I ran the line up and down from top to bottom about three times. Then I stuck a screw driver through the coils and turned the screw driver to tighten the coils. Some friends of mine call that a "Mexican Winch" but it works in a pinch. There are a number of applications where you could use this setup. Again, it is just another tip you keep stored away for future use. Hopefully, you'll never need to use it.