I used to run my halyard to a pully on bungie cord off the rear beam but found I kept kneeling on it while trying to snuff, which makes for a slow takedown! So now it just floats free and I try to stay away from it while hoisting or snuffing. As I approach A mark I take a look down at the tramp, check the lines to see that they are clear and will not hang up when I hoist. Same goes for downwind just before coming into C mark, I do a quick lookabout to see that all the lines are free and clear, and un-kinked, before I douse.
I still bunji the dousing line to the back of the boat but I don't use a block anymore. I use a cheap aluminum carabiner from WalMart and it does two things for me: 1) when I invariably forget to route the dousing line through it, I can just clip it in now, and 2) unlike a block, when the line gets a kink in it, it goes through the caribiner and most of the time it straightens out the kink. The kink would jam in a block of appropriate size for the line.
I use those stupid cheap carabiners everwhere I need to retain a line but they don't need to carry much load (lazy throughput of the spin sheet and mainsheet retainer on my a-cat).
