Test: does Dyneema® improve leisure sailing?

Having tested our Dyneema® ropes in our sailing catamaran CALISTA it is now time to take a resume if and how Dyneema ropes improved our sailing experience.

To say the last first: my expectations were exceeded.

From the sailers point of view the running rigging simply runs lighter over rollers and through clutches. I explain this to me with the „hardness“ of the Dyneema fibres which do not deform as much as conventional lines do. So we need less force to raise the sails and less force in trimming the sails. – Once set the trim remains stable.

My concerns were if the clutches will hold the higher loads. It turned out there is absolutely no problem with that!

Here is what happened last weekend:

We got into a thunderstorm with a vast rain shower and wind force of up to 50 knots of true wind. We hat 1 reef in main & no reef in genoa. I just managed to loose the genoa and all i had to do was to roller-reef the wild-running genoa!

The main sail remained as it was and even with main only we had 12+ knots speed sailing.

Although this obviously was a little „over-powered sailing“ nothing bad happened. We just had passed a Monohull as this happened. My wife said they have washed their decks while heeling and broached. We had no slipping ropes! Perfect trim!

I must omit from a leisure sailers point of view i was a little bit sceptical if high-tech running rigging would really improve our sailing experience above having shiny nice & new lines 🙂 But now i know it absolutely makes sense having high-quality lines like these Gleistein Dyneema ropes.

Packed together our Dyneema Experience improves our sailing:

1. rigging runs easier over rollers
2. less trimming force needed
3. more exact, stable trim
4. hold perfectly in normal clutches