Thinwater: You have said that you do not have snap shackles (load releasable devices) at your harness. Why? Every tether to the vessel should include the ability release the tether under load.
First, lest us agree that the final sentence represents an opinion that is widely held, but not a fact. As I said, racing sailing rules do not require them.
a. I do not worry about my boat capsizing. I am a coastal sailor and learned on some very tender racing cats up to 27 feet. Thus, I'm not worried about getting caught under the boat. If I were sailing something tender or crossing oceans I might reconsider. In any case, I suspect I can operate a Kong Tango faster in the dark under a boat than I can a spinnaker shackle and release it under moderate load; I've done just this hundreds of times rock climbing.
b. My tethers are very short (the short one is less than 2' and is anchored to a jack line at waist level when passing the cabin), my jacklines inboard, and I cannot go over the rail. That is a luxury of having a cat (a rough ride up wind is the price). If I had a boat where that was not the case I would have releases.
c. I have known spinnaker shackles to come open. Perhaps they were not closed properly, but the results is the same.
d. A spinnaker shackle takes 2 hands and cannot as easily be operated in the dark. I leave the long leg of the tether attached to the jack line at all times and detach from the harness end when going below, which is the reverse of common practice; it works better on my boat because of the width of the cabin. We keep both jacklines rigged and keep 2 tethers in place, pre-clipped, when their use seems likely.
Perhaps my reasons are cruising catamaran-specific. I would have different practices on a different boat; the tethers on my last boat had releases. I only mentioned the clips on this thread to clarify that it was
not normal practice and not to mislead the OP.
