More about those evil Knots
When I replaced the four original wire/rope halyards on our boat over a decade ago, I went with T-900. I did review the cautions about using a knot rather than the stronger splice. In order to be able to launder those lines in the future and then reverse them, I decided to used a knot - but did try to use one that had the least loss of strength. The rationale was/is that these very high tech lines have a strength of about 7K# in the 5/16" size that we used. Even assuming the worst, a reduction by half seems inconsequential.
This seems like a situation where, truly, "YMMV".
I guess that having a halyard take that sharp turn over a smooth ss shackle bale seemed OK to me because our prior boat came from the factory with dacron halyards secured close to their ss bales with one turn over and then fastened with an aluminum swage to the standing part. This made for a secure "un knot" and never caused any trouble for the decade we sailed our Niagara 26. We sailed it hard, although campaigned it in only two full racing seasons during our ownership.
Note the Hinterhoeller method of the swage termination and my nowadays use of a knot has the advantage of letting the shackle get close to the sheave and not jam in the sheave like a longer buried splice tail. That was really my concern all along -- if not for dealing with that long and fat "bury" I would certainly go with a "stronger" splice.
Link to the thread about halyards and knots.
http://www.ericsonyachts.org/infoexchange/showthread.php?12284-Halyard-Shackle-Knot-questions
Regards,
Loren