The stiffness of 3-strand was (sometimes) preventing the rope from falling nicely into the locker, and it would eventually back-jam the windlass stripper while we were raising the anchor. I would have to open the anchor locker and use a big flat blade screwdriver to free the jammed stripper, and then reach down below the windlass to pull the rope down behind the windlass. That issue could happen at any time but generally it happened when the locker was near full -- but it wasn't a splice jam.

I'm hoping this will solve my problem. Take a look at the radius of the bend to the left side of this image. It just happened to fall that way -- it's not an issue to bend it tightly in a 180 turn.

One other splicing tip -- tape each end of the 8 strands, but also tape the pairs together for the first two tucks. That helps keep the proper twist, but it became more difficult to manage that way after two tucks and I handled the strands individually (still putting them through the tucks as pairs until the 4th full tuck). There is so much handling involved to keep the 8 strands in order and keep the tucks tight (and the lay is so soft) it becomes tough to stop the strands from untwisting as you work it. Notice that the first three tucks show the lay of the small fibers in parallel with the length of the rope (as it should be), but by the 4th tuck the fibers are more in parallel with the direction of the tucks. The next time I do this I'll try to improve that, but this splice should be strong enough and stay tight. I'm pretty satisfied with the results for a "version 1.0".