We didn’t like how our cockpit lines were piled up around our winches and decided to try installing some line organizers. We purchased them a while ago but finally worked up enough courage to put our first five drill holes into the fiberglass.

We purchased six rope clip line organizers from Blue Performance at least eight months ago. But they’ve just been collecting dust since we were too chicken to drill any holes into our boat.

After reading plenty of different posts and watching many YouTube videos on everyone’s own proper way to install bolts we decided on a middle of the road solution.

  1. Carefully measure and mark where the hole is going to go. We re-measured at least four times because we didn’t want to mess up.
  2. We used masking tape to help measure and mark the spots to drill.
  3. Drill a pilot hole through the masking tape. This helped prevent the drill from wandering away from where we wanted to drill.
  4. Drill a larger hole using a diameter that matches the diameter of the screw. Same size as shank and smaller than the thread.
  5. Use a countersink drill bit to flair out the hole. Some people said that this would help prevent cracking.
  6. Use a bit of silicon sealant on the screw and attach.

Enough of the boring stuff. Here’s the final result.

Here’s the first two rope clips attached to solid part just below the hand rails.

We attached two on the port side and three on starboard.

We are really happy with the result! The cockpit looks much cleaner and simpler now. The area they were piled in earlier does drain drain some water from the deck and our lines are going to stay cleaner and drier in their new location!

I also really like the organization. To the left of the companionway the red and green lines are our reefing lines. Green is first reef. Red is second reef. TO the right of the companionway is our main sheet. To the right of that is our furling line and halyards.

If you are thinking of doing this, there are several options of rope clips. We liked the wide adjustable strap of the Blue Performance rope clips. We also looked at “Halyard Hangers” which is a stainless steel hanger. It uses two screws to secure but uses a thinner rope to attach. We thought the strap would be kinder to our lines with less chaffing.

We also re-measured our lines and determined maximum length needed and cut them down. I’ve updated the measurements in my other post about purchasing new lines for our sailboat.