Up the mast(s)

As I stood there preparing to go up the main mast, they were laying bets on how many times I would be going up and down the mast.

I'm not sure what the odds were on how many times I would be up and down, but my personal bets were not on how many times up and down it would be but how long it would take to catch the thread I had to drop as a tracer for the wind sensor wire. I was betting it would be pretty difficult to catch a tracer thread dropped down the mast!

Safety is paramount to both Tim and I, and Daniel as a professional seaman was overseeing even us.

As well as having a primary line on the bosuns chair and a secondary line on the lifejacket/harness, each of the shackles were moused so that they could not come undone.

Climbing the mast becomes easier the more you do it, and today I was much more confident and comfortable climbing the main mast.

It's still quite a climb and you feel strange with all the gear strapped to you and a bag tied to you with all your tools inside.

Nothing should drop to the deck, so each tool also has a safety line attached to the bosuns chair.

I think it was the hottest day so far this year. And I forgot to put on any sun protection cream, so although I didn't burn badly my arms were kind of glowing by the end of the day.

Daniel, who is fairer than I am, did get burnt a little.

I said I was concerned about catching the thread at the bottom of the mast... well, this is the hook, made out of an old coathanger that Tim had to try and catch it with.

What do you reckon his odds are on doing it first time?

Apart from Becky taking all these photos, there is Dan on deck watching as safety lookout, me at the top of the mast and Tim below decks fishing for the thread I dropped.

While Tim was fishing I was fixing the mount for the wind sensor in place. We had acquired a piece of box aluminium which we had mounted the sensor base to and cut two holes to fix to the two studs on the top of the mast.

The holes were approx 1-2 mm out so I had to lower the mount and have it modified to fix in place.

I then got the most amazing radio message from Tim....

He hooked the thread first time.

He just pushed the hook into the mast, waggled it about, twisted it to catch the thread and pulled it our with the tracer thread attached!

Never was a radio message so gratefully received. I had been reckoning on 30 minutes at least.

Coming down the mast is easier than going up.

I just allow myself to be lowered down by Daniel, and fend myself off the spreaders, steps and anything else designed to damage limbs.

The second time up the main mast I took the wind sensor with me and fixed that on. It was wonderful to see the wind sensor in place, spinning and pointing to the wind.

I look forward to seeing it connected and showing us sailing soon... there's hope for you.

Then it's down to the deck and not up the main mast again today.

I will have to go up again, since when I was drilling the holes for the self tapping screws to fix the gland for the wire for the wind sensor, the drill broke.

I will glue the gland in place with Sikaflex next time. It would have been more sensible to do this in the first place, but like many tasks on the boat, we are learning as we go along.

Next it's up the mizzen mast to fix the radar reflector. Or at least that was the plan.

Again we used two halyards, one for the bosun's chair and another for safety line. Before climbing I test the weight at deck level by sitting in the chair. As I do so so plastic from on high breaks off and falls on Tim's head.

Now where did that come from? Best bet is that it is part of the block at the top of the mast. So I very carefully climb the mast with the safety line being taken in by Tim.

It was indeed the block that had broken. When I saw it, I realised that there wasn't actually much left of the block. Glad that wasn't taking my weight.

When I got to the top I asked Tim to send up a rope to tie the bosun's chair to the top of the mast to I could release the block and replace it.

He did one better, sending up the webbing safety line with double cow hitches at one end. This was better than I had thought and will be what I use in the future. I used two of the cow hitches to attach the bosun's chair and that left the extra cow hitch to clip the tool bag to. It was very easy to work in that environment.

I then got them to send up one of the turning blocks from the vang for the mizzen boom and replaced the block with that one.

Meanwhile Daniel stitched a replacement 12 mm line to the 10mm line that ran up the mast through that block. I pulled the line through and tied on to the bosun's chair. Now I felt really safe working on the mizzen mast with new 12mm line.

In the old days (I mean wooden sailing boats 'of the line') sailors whistled to each other and had different whistle signals to mean different things with different ropes. When theatres started having rope lines to suspend lighting poles and sets they often employed sailors, since they knew about ropes and such like, to control all these ropes and pulleys and things. Theatres with those sorts of ropes were known as 'hemp houses' and theatre law said 'never whistle up stage'. Why? Well, the innocent whistle of an actor might be the signal to a sailor to drop the rope above his head!

Having hand held marine band radios really made communications over all this very much easier.

Sitting at the top of the mizzen mast, although shorter than the main mast, gave me a brilliant sight right across the marina.

While waiting for Daniel to stitch the two ropes together I had the chance to look around at the different yachts in the marina from an angle I had never seen them before.

The final task was to drill and rivet the mounts for the Echomax radar reflector in place and then bolt the radar reflector to the mounts.

The wind had come up a little by then and I kept being blown round the wrong side of the mast by the wind while trying to drill the holes for the pop rivets.

We finished 30 minutes later than we had hoped, having done one more task than anticipated. All in all a great morning's work.

The afternoon went well too: Tim and I ran some cables and Daniel connected in the car radio/CD player from our old car.