[NickE]

We used the steel cable up through 2008. In 2011, we used Dyneema. We also used the Dyneema in our kicker winch in 2010.

If I remember correctly, the knot we've had the best luck with is the triple fisherman's knot. The bowline tended to slip under load.

In 2011, we did have some issues with the Dyneema jumping off of its pulleys and getting wedged in to the pulley mount blocks. We fixed this by dramatically reducing the amount of clearance between the pulleys and the mounts (down to ~.015" IIRC).

Dyneema and Spectra are similar and are both made of UHMW. We used Dyneema because it was easier to source in the diameters we needed (West Marine).

Nylon webbing is another good option for these sorts of applications. 1114 used it on their 2010 kicker and 2011 cascading elevator.