Why You Should Consider Dyneema Rope For Your Boat

Why You Should Consider Dyneema Rope For Your Boat

Dyneema rope has fast become the market leader for performance rope. Dyneema is an Ultra High Molecular Weight Polyethylene fibre that was developed in the Netherlands just over 20 years ago.

Dyneema is lightweight and is the World's strongest fibre. Being lightweight and strong are not the only characteristics, the dyneema fibre is also water and UV resistant.

Here at Sailing Chandlery we sell a huge amount of dyneema rope in various formats, whether that be a 12 strand dyneema rope, or a dyneema core rope with a harder wearing jacket. We stock a good selection to help you with everything from your trapeze lines through to yacht halyards.

Why dyneema?

If we have a think about where dyneema could be used on your boat there are initially two areas to review:

• Weight saving - can you swap heavy rope or rigging for dyneema?
• Reduced rope stretch - is your halyard stretching and changing your sail shape?

Weight Saving with Dyneema

Think about your trapeze lines, can you replace the heavy wire with 2mm dyneema? A 2mm dyneema will come with around 450kgs of average breaking strain, plenty to hold you up above the water.

Your shrouds are the same, many pre-stretched dyneema ropes can act as shrouds too.

Also think about your shackles, probably metal and probably bouncing on and damaging your deck and boat in some areas. Our dyneema shackles are lightweight, easy to connect and certainly won't leave chunks out of your deck.

Reduced Rope Stretch with Dyneema

If you put a polyester rope under strain it's going to stretch. If you are using a 10mm braid on braid rope for your yacht halyard you will see around 3.7% stretch at 20% of the breakload. The average breakload would be 2,400kgs. If you change that for an 8mm dyneema core halyard rope the stretch would be 1% and you would increase the breakload to 3,570kgs with a thinner rope. Thinner rope means less friction while hoisting and retrieving your sail.

With dyneema being stronger is does mean you can work with thinner diameter ropes. Another popular thing to do is to taper halyards down to only the dyneema is showing along parts of the rope. This retains the strength you need but reduced friction where fast launches are needed.

Having less stretch in your rope will help to keep the sail where it should be keeping the sail shape leading to more speed through the water.

With just these two options you should have been able to help reduce the weight on your boat, along with the friction of your ropes as they go through the systems. We've also potentially improved your sail shape, or at least kept the sail where it should be in the gusts. This has made your boat lighter, easier to sail and hopefully faster.

Dyneema Cord Options

We sell a variety of dyneema cord at Sailing Chandlery. Our most popular are the 3mm dyneema and 4mm dyneema ropes but we also supply dyneema from 2mm through to 12mm.

You will need to choose whether you need a 12 strand dyneema rope or a dyneema core rope with a harder wearing jacket.

Read more about our dyneema cord options.

Dyneema Questions?

If you have questions about any of our dyneema ropes then please do get in touch, our team are here to provide you with helpful advice.