Ineos Team UK releases details of using Marlow Ropes

Ineos Team UK says it has turned to specialist synthetic ropes manufacturer Marlow Ropes to ready Britannia for the upcoming America’s Cup.

Adam Minter (pictured) is Ineos Team UK’s Senior Rigging Technician. As part of the rigging team, his responsibilities include looking after all the rope systems onboard the boat, within the sail and on the rig.

“We use Marlow for everything,” says Minter, “every single bit of rope on the boat or around the dockyard is Marlow. Whether that’s the kit line that the sailors use to tie bits and pieces to their lifejackets, through to the dock lines for all the chase boats, through to the high tensile rope that we use for the top of the standing rigging strops that have got anywhere from 15 to 18 tonnes on them. It’s all Marlow.

“The UK testing period was really good for us. It was of course a difficult start to the year for us, as it has been for everyone, with the limitations imposed by Covid, but over the summer we learnt a huge deal from sailing our first boat.

“From a rigging standpoint, it being a completely new class of boat, it was important to understand what we can expect from it, and then how we can use that information when transferring to our new boat here in Auckland, and how we can set up similar systems to be more effective and reduce breakdowns.

“Fortunately for us as a rigging team, the Marlow product we have been using has been very reliable, so we’ve been really happy with the summer of testing we had. We have of course also been working on a few little tricks to fine-tune some of our systems but nothing that we can give away yet. For us, it is all about making the rigging systems as reliable, efficient and neat as possible in and around the yacht.

“Wherever possible, we try to use the most sustainable products,” says Minter. “For example, for the mooring line on our chase boats we use their brand-new Blue Ocean yarn, which is manufactured from recycled plastic bottles. Then, since earlier this year, for all our other Marlow products we have been using their bio-based Dyneema fibre, which again is a greener and more sustainable product as it uses feedstock from waste in the pulp and timber industry as its primary raw-material.

“From a product workability point of view, they are exactly the same products as their non-recycled predecessors so it’s a great thing for us and Marlow to be able to contribute to the vision of enabling a sustainable future for manufacturing in the UK with no negative impact on our rigging performance.”