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You'd think that if the shrouds(?) for a parachute can be packed so they don't tangle, we could do the same for 1 line! How 'bout coiling the line on the back of the life jacket, secured with bungies?
How are you going to tack and get through the mess of lines? The line you speak of, must be attached to the boat at some point, but where?

Ive been giving this long thoughts for a year now. At first I wanted to use a surfboard leash, but how was I going to get from one side of the boat to the other, without getting in the way of the lines?

Using the shackle I attached, for every tack/gybe you have to unshackle to clear the line, once on the other side of the boat, you shackle yourself back in. For bouy racing this wont work because it is just another thing to slow you down. But for distance racing where not too many tacks are involved or solo sailing (ie not racing) it can work darn good.


The problem with that is that you are more likely to fall off the boat whilst in a tack or gybing manuever. Astral has an interesting fitting on some of their high end life vests (and our distance racing jackets) that has a strap around the back of the jacket that goes through a stainless ring and then through a quick release buckle. The system was intended to use a tow system for kayaks so the person doing to towing could quickly pop the tow line loose from themselves if they needed to. We used the system to attach our lanyard, required for the Tybee 500, to . I still don't know about leashing myself to the boat, but I've recognized it's potential usefulness if the boat is capsized, going turtle, and one sailor is tangled on the trampoline. I found myself on the bottom of the cat trying to prevent it from going turtle (and only slowing things down) while the other sailor was trying to get untangled. Once, I could have used it to throw the lanyard over the boat and take some of the sailor's weight off his entanglement but didn't think about it, the second time I was ready but just quite didn't need it.

Jake Kohl