Cheap and easy safety harness

Tim R. · Nov 12, 2010

Just make sure you have a sharp knife if the boat is going down. Mine has a quick release for this very reason.

Ed A · Nov 12, 2010

if your really interested in what works and what does not. you should read the book ,
"fastnet Force 10". Great book about the fastnet race in the 70's. It talks about the storm, the equipment and the boats that saved lives and some that did not.

It is probably out of print but may be available somewhere. It is a great study in saftey gear and what worked and what did not.

Alan · Nov 12, 2010

All my crew are required to carry a one hand opening knife on a lanyard attached to themselves. This way anyone can cut themselves loose from any line and always have a knife ready to do the job. I use a bungee as a lanyard that can only stretch as far as my arm can reach.

Steve Dion · Nov 12, 2010

Rgranger:

I think you are f'in nuts.

"Seems perfect for the situation where you have a guest on board and need a harness. Or maybe you are cheap like me and this will be the first option."

Cheap? Great when it is someone else life.

For less than $70 you can have a "real" safety harness that some can wear with their life jacket or better yet they can have a harness & inflatable jacket for less than $200.

PS: I hope you have a adequate supply of those $20 life jackets aboard.

catsailor · Nov 12, 2010

rgranger said:
Hey All

I found this Youtube video that demonstrates how to rig a quick and dirty safety harness. It looked really good to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pffKSYino3Y

Seems perfect for the situation where you have a guest on board and need a harness. Or maybe you are cheap like me and this will be the first option.

No, No, No.

This is fairly standard climbing and rescue stuff. I've used 2 of the 3 methods before on the rock or in training settings. However...
* the attachment points are wrong. hanging and getting dragged through the water are 2 very different things. Must keep the head up while dragging.
* if tight enough to stay in place, it will be VERY uncomfortable on a boat.
* 1-inch webbing hurts under load; the firefighter was wearing turn-out gear.

There are cheap kits and plans for making sailing harnesses that can be very good.

Lanyards, of course, are a separate matter that the OP did not bring up. So are jacklines.

Additionally, I have a hard time imagining sending a greenhorn up front in a harness. That is a job for a more experienced hand with a proper harness.

Here are a few ideas, for the cheapskate:
http://sail-delmarva.blogspot.com/2009/10/climbing-gear-for-sailors-or-jacklines.html

And a few more:
http://sail-delmarva.blogspot.com/2010/04/sample-calculations-for-jack-line.html

And some other stuff that some will hate and others will find amusing. Oh well.
http://sail-delmarva.blogspot.com/2010/03/are-you-captain-safety.html

The truth is that the needs of a coastal and lake sailor and a bluewater sailor are different, though the same basics still apply.

druid · Nov 13, 2010

Money doesn't always buy you safety. Those $20 keyhole lifejackets are actually WAY safer than the average $200 inflatable (for one thing, they don't have to inflate). And coming from a skydiving background, I took one look at the "safety harness", saw the box-X stitching, and said "NO WAY!". I can make a good, safe, strong harness from a piece of rope in about 30 seconds. Add a 'biner on the end and I'm Good To Go.

(I've noticed the newer harnesses no longer use box-X stitching)

druid

catsailor · Nov 13, 2010

druid said:
Money doesn't always buy you safety. Those $20 keyhole lifejackets are actually WAY safer than the average $200 inflatable (for one thing, they don't have to inflate). And coming from a skydiving background, I took one look at the "safety harness", saw the box-X stitching, and said "NO WAY!". I can make a good, safe, strong harness from a piece of rope in about 30 seconds. Add a 'biner on the end and I'm Good To Go.

(I've noticed the newer harnesses no longer use box-X stitching)

druid

Very true, rope can work well enough in a pinch. I'm sure other s have done this many times, but twice I have tied rope harnesses, in the pattern of a conventional chest harness, for crew that did not bring harnesses and was too big for the ones I had. Well fit (which they should be if custom tied) they can be good for a coastal passage. I recall it took about 8 feet of 5/8" line.

Hermit Scott · Nov 14, 2010

druid said:
Money doesn't always buy you safety. Those $20 keyhole lifejackets are actually WAY safer than the average $200 inflatable (for one thing, they don't have to inflate). And coming from a skydiving background, I took one look at the "safety harness", saw the box-X stitching, and said "NO WAY!". I can make a good, safe, strong harness from a piece of rope in about 30 seconds. Add a 'biner on the end and I'm Good To Go.

(I've noticed the newer harnesses no longer use box-X stitching)

druid

I bought a zig zag sailrite to sew harnesses for my fitness business. You just don't see what is best when buying and using safety sailboat harnesses because (if all is going well) you aren't falling off a lot and being dragged. The X stitching eventually fails with pulling harnesses. What holds every time and never comes undone is thick zigzag stitching perpendicular to the tension.
I am going to make my own harness out of seatbelt material for the boat.

catsailor · Nov 14, 2010

Hermit Scott said:
I bought a zig zag sailrite to sew harnesses for my fitness business. You just don't see what is best when buying and using safety sailboat harnesses because (if all is going well) you aren't falling off a lot and being dragged. The X stitching eventually fails with pulling harnesses. What holds every time and never comes undone is thick zigzag stitching perpendicular to the tension.
I am going to make my own harness out of seatbelt material for the boat.

Actually, if you examine rock climbing slings, industrial rigging, and harnesses, it's bar tacking that holds the high loads. Zig-zag stitching is only to hold layers in place, flexibly. Zig-zag stitching is a poor choice for webbing, as it allows one stitch to carry too much load if there is a pealing force present. Great for sails, where the goal is to avoid point loading and there is no pealing force.

I used to make climbing gear (business). If you are going to sew something, I recommend sewing a few small samples and then braking them under body weight; it is the ONLY way you will know if the combination of thread and tension are correct, and how many inches of bar tacking are required to reach your design strength (typically 5,000 pounds).

Why 5,000 pounds? You must allow for UV an wear, and still have a 5:1 safety factor. A 1,000 pound impact force is surprisingly easy to reach. This is a proven rating for harnesses in a variety of applications and assureds they will have a good long life, even with some abuse.

http://sail-delmarva.blogspot.com/2010/04/sample-calculations-for-jack-line.html

Fit is the main thing. About 20 years ago I helped scrape a climber off the ground after he fell out of his harness; it was still on the rope, 200 feet further up. A terrible shame.

Hermit Scott · Nov 14, 2010

Is the bar stitching where you set the machine to zig zag and then set the spacing distance very close and sew it forward and backward until there is a sold bar of stitching? If so that is the type of stitch I use that never fails. I got the idea from the climbing gear I have. I also buy some stuff from a shop that makes custom harnesses for line workers and such, they had it done that way as well.

catsailor · Nov 15, 2010

Hermit Scott said:
Is the bar stitching where you set the machine to zig zag and then set the spacing distance very close and sew it forward and backward until there is a sold bar of stitching? If so that is the type of stitch I use that never fails. I got the idea from the climbing gear I have. I also buy some stuff from a shop that makes custom harnesses for line workers and such, they had it done that way as well.

Not quite. The machine we used had a specific setting for bar tacking. However, what you say sounds reasonable, if not quite optimum (the stitching is not quite as tight, subsequent passes are not all sharing the same portion of the load, and you are resewing over stitiching, possibly causing some damage). Test break a small piece, to be certain! It always made me feel better, it is, in fact, the only certain QC, and is what matters.

I always keep 2 harnesses on the boat for my use; one that fits over a tee-shirt (non-adjustable and very simple), and one that fits over foul weather gear (adjustable). Perhaps the worst failure is a harness that does not fit, as it can come off. Breaking is far less likely.

Hermit Scott · Nov 15, 2010

catsailor said:
Not quite. The machine we used had a specific setting for bar tacking. However, what you say sounds reasonable, if not quite optimum (the stitching is not quite as tight, subsequent passes are not all sharing the same portion of the load, and you are resewing over stitiching, possibly causing some damage). Test break a small piece, to be certain! It always made me feel better, it is, in fact, the only certain QC, and is what matters.

I always keep 2 harnesses on the boat for my use; one that fits over a tee-shirt (non-adjustable and very simple), and one that fits over foul weather gear (adjustable). Perhaps the worst failure is a harness that does not fit, as it can come off. Breaking is far less likely.

How can I test break it? What I sew together for fitness equipment is a leader not unlike what goes from the sailing harness to the jackline. The X stitching on these is what was coming apart after a while. To test it do you pull it apart with your car or something?

Bill Roosa · Nov 15, 2010

distructive testing

You use two handy trees of sutable girth and a comealong Hermit

catsailor · Nov 15, 2010

Hermit Scott said:
How can I test break it? What I sew together for fitness equipment is a leader not unlike what goes from the sailing harness to the jackline. The X stitching on these is what was coming apart after a while. To test it do you pull it apart with your car or something?

Think science project. Figure out how many inches of stitching your 180-pound mass (no bouncing) will break (perhaps only 1/2-inch of stitching) and then extrapolate: (required inches of stitching) = (inches that broke) x 5,000/180. In this illustration, 0.5*5000/180=13.9 inches.

That is what I was getting at when I suggested body weight; it had to be a known force applied to a known length of stitching.

Hermit Scott · Nov 16, 2010

I still live in the town where I went to engineering school. I could drop by the materials lab and pull it apart with the machine we used to pull apart metal samples. It actually graphed out force and elongation. I think we were measuring stress and strain. There are a few sailboat things I would like to do some quantitative destruction on. I'd like to rip apart some shrouds with swaged and mechanical fittings. I'd like to rip apart some spliced rope and different knots as well.

Hermit Scott · Nov 16, 2010

rgranger said:
Hermit

You could probably publish a nice (and valuable) pamphlet with data like that. I know I'd like to read it.

While you are at it... you could test the strength of attachment points to the hull. For instance how much backing plate do you need for the block to fail before the hull does?

We'll do that testing on YOUR boat!

Hermit Scott · Nov 16, 2010

rgranger said:
Hermit

You could probably publish a nice (and valuable) pamphlet with data like that. I know I'd like to read it.

While you are at it... you could test the strength of attachment points to the hull. For instance how much backing plate do you need for the block to fail before the hull does?

We'll do that testing on YOUR boat!

That's like saying let's stress test a harness, on a person, to see if the person fails before the harness. I am just joking.
I do wonder how often chain plates rip through the fiberglass before a shroud fails.