Posted by Peter Ceresole on March 07, 2007 at 08:31:42 from 80.177.22.49 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: Journey back from Secret Water posted by Bill Wallace-King on March 06, 2007 at 20:51:27:
I have experience of a 16mm towrope breaking - it was fairly dramatic and I'm glad I wasn't in its way.
A dreadfully long time ago one of my school friends was the son of a Thames lighterman. This was when hemp ropes were being displaced by synthetics- I think Terylene was becoming popular. He reported his father as saying that they were dangerous because they were so strong that people started to trust them too much, and swing barges on them in a way they would never dare to do with hemp. And when they broke they released huge amounts of energy. Apart from the danger to life and limb, he said that a Terylene rope would, likely as not, snap back and form a knot jam in the towing eye, and that the only way to clear the eye was to burn the rope out with a blowtorch.