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More pulleys!

One of my minor projects this past week was to restring the cable supplying power to the boathouse. In some storm while we were away last year, a branch fell and stressed the screw hook in this photo so much that it bent and the cable (and electrical wires wrapped around it) popped out. I actually forgot to bend it back into place before I set this system up, but it wasn’t too hard even with this all in place. (You can see the hook is still deformed here.)

These are actually the blocks from the boom vang (pulls the boom down on a sailboat to keep the sail flat) of a Laser (a single-person racing/recreational boat also used in the Olympics). I used prusik knots to tie the blocks to both the cable and the hook. It’s actually the first I’ve ever really used that knot for anything (I usually use rolling or icicle hitches for jobs like this, for some reason), and I don’t know how many of you will appreciate this, but this little knot is *amazing.* It’s simple, and definitely worth learning if you need to pull bones out of the ground or scale government buildings or something.