It’s interesting how much manufactures want for pendants, when I first purchased my R25 I was short on cash, so I purchased about 30’ of three strand rope. I learned how splice loops in the ends and created my own pendant. I thought about various knots used for climbing and decided I could adapt these to boating. I don’t worry about losing strength so much as long as I used knots that aren’t worse than 50%. At first, I tied a figure 8 knot (20-30% loss) in the end and clipped it on, but that’s a long reach to the buoy or a pain to lift the chain. So now there's no knot in the middle and when I catch the buoy, I simply thread it through the eye on the chain and then walk it forward to tie off on the bow cleat and running each side through each chock. The rope simply slides though the eye as the boat moves. It pretty much stays in the middle. I have been doing this for about 6 years with little to no wear on the rope and if there was, I’ll toss it and make a new one. And retrieval is a snap.
I also us this same rope for taking the tension off the windlass. Except here I tie a double prusik knot on the anchor rode and again bring the loops back to the main cleat running through both chocks. I may be wrong, but it has been working for me. In both cases the ropes have been under extreme strain due to wind with no issues.
