doing (e.g. in the case of a yacht's halyards or sheets during a close race), the tackle can be racked while the repair is being carried on. Thus, if the hauling part of the throat halyards be cut, the other three or more parts of the halyards are racked by passing a piece of thin line round and between them several times tightly, and then tying the two ends of the line together with a reef knot. This grips the parts, prevents the halyard from running through the blocks, and enables them to hold on and withstand the strain put upon them, while the injured part is cast loose and repaired at leisure.
Some of the blocks used on board a yacht—those, for example, which are hooked on to the mast for the throat and peak halyards—are usually stropped with iron; and in the neatly finished blocks, the iron is covered by the shell of the block. But for other parts of the rigging ordinary blocks are employed; and the amateur sailor should know how to splice an eye in the end of a piece of hemp or wire rope for the strop of a tail block, and how to make a grommet, or a selvagee strop.
I have already explained how to splice an eye in a rope, and how to make a grommet. For stropping a block a Selvagee Strop is to be preferred to a grommet, though both are used for this purpose. A selvagee strop is thus made: two large nails are firmly driven into a piece of board at a distance apart of about half the circumference of the required strop. One end of a ball of rope-yarn is fastened
