Theis,

Well, you convinced me. I kept trying to come up with an adaptation to my 20 year carabiner-based harness that would allow it to be used safely and effectively with my new jackline system. Today I went another route.

My old harness is probably fine for crewed sails, but for single handing, a sailor needs to be able to clip and unclip under tension if he or she is going to transfer from the tether to an alternative point, such as my jackline tails.

So I picked up a double (3 ft and 6 ft) elastic tether and a harness today with Gibb hooks on the boat end and a snap shackle on the harness end. It all seems to work well, and was probably a good investment for single-handed sailing.

The problem with the skyhook is that most sailboats do not maintain a reliably constant relative bearing in relation to the sky. One could get wrapped around the mast, but then again, perhaps a skyhook bungee with a quick release pin would work.