An eye for a good link
Towing operations now have a shiny new alternative to the commonly used cow-hitch, but why?
Ian Hutchinson of Lankhorst explains the traditional method of simply “hitching” together the main line and the lighter, sacrificial pennant “often results in the thinner line eating into the thicker one”, which may lead to premature rope failure.
Further, linking and unlinking can be a time consuming business: “Once these lines have been together for a while the knot tends to set hard and it is then virtually impossible to part unless you cut them.”
An alternative developed by Kotug – and now being helped into the market by Lankhorst – is both simple and yet, according to Mr Hutchinson, really very effective: the Ko-Link towing ring is a highly polished circle which is inserted into the splice eye of the towline. Sized for virtually any rope diameter all the way up to 189mm these make linking and unlinking the pennant much quicker and easier. Any additional weight has been kept to a minimum as the ring is made of aluminium.
“The main thing is it cuts down the time on these operations,” says Mr Hutchinson, but he admits there’s a slightly more controversial reason for using them. “You simply can’t tell how much life a rope has left in it, and sometimes there’s even doubt that the pennant is really the weaker of the two lines. But if you use the Ko-Link as a connector you can intentionally create a weak link: I understand not everyone will agree with using it like this but if a line is going to fail, then there’s advantages to having some control over exactly where this happens.”
By Stevie Knight
