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Up the mast
The only sure things in
life are death, taxes, and that - sooner or later - you will have to go up
your mast. Many people dread going aloft and will do just about anything to
avoid it, even putting off needed repairs or rig inspections. But the trip
needn't be a white-knuckle affair. With the proper equipment and technique,
you can actually enjoy going aloft. I've gone from being afraid of heights to
looking for opportunities to climb the mast (anyone's mast) just for the
view. Really. There are two parts to
the problem. The first is how to get up the mast. Unless you have a couple of
strong deck apes handy to grind away on a halyard winch, this can be a real
concern. But this isn't your only consideration. Just as important is the
question of what to use for support once you're up there. Bosun's chairs For most sailors the
answer to this second part is the trusty bosun's chair. For comfort aloft
it's hard to beat a well-padded board. But bosun's chairs are also part of
the reason most people hate going aloft. It just doesn't feel secure sitting
in one of those things. You are tense and apprehensive the whole time,
worried that you might fall right out of it. And in fact, if you lean over
too far in many of them (like when stretching to reach a spreader tip), you
can fall out. Fabric chairs with back supports, waist belts, and crotch
straps give more of a feeling of security, but you still aren't secure. John Vigor notes in The
Practical Mariner's Book of Knowledge that he prefers to use an ordinary
wooden plank as a bosun's chair "to remain insecure and terrified on the
theory that if I don't feel complacent, I won't relax my guard." Avoiding
complacency is a good thing, but feeling terrified may keep many sailors from
going aloft, even when they need to.
Climber's harness The solution to this
feeling of insecurity is not therapy, but a mountaineer-style climber's harness.
It looks and feels a bit strange at first to be tightly strapped into this
contraption, but you get used to it. And the sense of security that comes
with knowing you can even hang upside down is fantastic. It was a revelation
to find just how relaxed I could feel aloft while using one of these. An
additional benefit to using a harness is that the point of attachment is
lower than with a chair. That makes it a little easier to reach the top of
the mast when working at the masthead. The main drawback to many
harnesses is that they can be uncomfortable for long "hang times,"
since your weight is supported by two-inch webbing. Choose a harness with
thick padding on the waist belt and leg loops (as shown in illustration). The
best I have seen uses a modified rescue harness available from Brion Toss
Rigging. Safety There isn't much you can
do on a sailboat that is inherently more dangerous than climbing the mast. So
safety should be uppermost in your mind at every step of the process. Don't
try any of these techniques until you are sure you know what you are doing.
Always use a "belt and suspenders" approach, with a backup for the
primary hoist method. That usually means being hooked to two halyards when
aloft, preferably halyards with internal masthead sheaves. If using a
climber's harness, hook both halyards to the ring provided. If using a chair,
hook the second halyard to a separate chest safety harness. (Note: for
clarity the extra safety halyard was omitted from illustrations on Pages 7,
8, and 9, but this is not a good idea in practice!) Don't depend on snap
shackles! Use only screw shackles, locking carabiners, or good knots to
attach the halyards: a bowline, or better yet, a buntline hitch - never a
square knot (see illustration). Before you ascend, talk through
every step with those on deck who are helping you, to be sure that all of
your commands are clear and understood. (The last thing you want is for
someone to release the wrong halyard.) Don't depend on self-tailers alone to
belay halyards - use cleats. Tie all of your tools to your tool bucket, as it
annoys members of the crew to have things fall on them. Finally, don't get
complacent when coming down - take your time. What techniques are
available for climbing the mast, and which is right for you? Some of the
things to keep in mind in choosing a method include whether you need crew on
deck, how much equipment is involved, and whether the technique would work at
sea in an emergency. Mast steps The most obvious approach
for getting up your mast would be to turn your mast into a giant ladder using
mast steps. These fixed or folding metal steps are most often seen aboard
shorthanded cruising boats and can make getting up the mast as simple as
climbing a ladder. The benefits are that they are always ready, give easy
access to the very top of the mast, and allow you to climb aloft without the
aid of crew. The drawbacks include windage, weight aloft, aesthetics,
potential halyard fouling, and the difficulty of hanging onto the steps in
anything rougher than a dead calm. If help is available, you should always
climb mast steps with a second halyard attached to a safety harness or a
climber's harness, and you should have someone taking up the slack in the
halyard to support you in case you fall. Once up the mast, you may still want
a bosun's chair or a climber's harness for support while working, as you
can't easily reach the spreader tips from the mast steps. Overall, if you are
willing to put up with having steps on your mast, it would be hard to beat
the convenience of this method. If you plan on using mast
steps to go aloft alone, you should rig an ascender on a fixed line as a
backup. An ascender is a piece of mountain-climbing gear ($50). Well-known
examples include the Petzl and Jumar. It fits around a line (of about 1/2
inch diameter) and has an internal cam that allows it to slide easily up a
line, but locks in place if you pull downward. If you have an available
halyard of the proper diameter, you secure it near the deck, fasten a tether
from the ascender to your harness, and slide the ascender up the fixed line
as you go. If your halyard is not the proper diameter, you will need to hoist
a 1/2-inch line aloft instead. Once you get where you're going, you can allow
the ascender to take the load. To descend, you momentarily disengage the cam
and slide the ascender down a few feet at a time as you climb down the steps. An alternative to using a
halyard or an ascender for a backup would be to clip a safety line from your
safety (or climber's) harness around the mast as you work your way up. Use a
carabiner on the end, so you can unclip as you pass the shrouds and
spreaders. (An alternative to this would be a lineman's belt, or Mast Mate's
Tool Bag Workbelt. If you fall, this line will jam up against the next
obstruction on the mast. But that still means you could drop from the second
to first spreaders or from just under the first spreaders to the deck. To be
extra safe (especially if it is turbulent), use a halyard with an ascender
and a safety line around the mast.
Mast ladders What if you don't want to
mount those metal triangles on your mast, but still want the simplicity of
climbing steps? Then your best bet would be a mast ladder. There are
currently two of these on the market, the Mast Mate and Capt. Al's. These are
essentially web ladders that are hoisted up the mast with a halyard, then
made fast at the deck. To minimize the side-to-side motion while climbing,
each has provisions for mounting sail slides (which you provide) to the
vertical webbing. You can then run the slides up the mainsail sailtrack to
give lateral support. The Mast Mate uses two-inch webbing for its single
vertical support strap. It has alternating steps every 17 inches (there is
also a 12-inch step version). The Capt. Al's uses three one-inch vertical web
straps, with PVC tubing placed over webbing between the straps to form the
steps every 12 inches. A mast ladder has most of
the advantages of the fixed mast steps, without the drawbacks of windage,
aesthetics, and potential halyard fouling. The major downside to mast ladders
is that they can't easily be used underway unless you either drop the
mainsail or do without the sailtrack support. And even if the main is down,
it may be necessary sometimes to remove much of the main from the sailtrack
to mount the mast ladder. The safety procedures for regular mast steps (a
second halyard, ascender, or safety line) should be followed here too. The
Mast Mate is about $250 (35-foot length) to $350 (50-foot length) while Capt.
Al's is about $150 (36-foot length) to $250 (50-foot length). My Ericson came with a
Mast Mate left in one of the lockers by the previous owner. I loved the
simplicity of the approach and was eager to try it. But I found the sensation
of climbing a flexible ladder to be a little unsteady for my taste (not
surprising, since I wasn't using any safety backup that day), and I only made
it to the lower spreaders before turning back. By the time I needed to go
aloft again, I had installed a batten car system that blocked off my
sailtrack - I needed to find another approach. But a friend with a 45-footer
regularly uses a mast ladder and swears by it. Halyard winches Another method for going
aloft uses the boat's halyard winch to hoist someone in a bosun's chair
attached to a halyard. There are a few problems with this approach. In the
case of most sailing couples, the man goes aloft and the woman stays on deck.
Given the small size of most halyard winches, there usually isn't enough
mechanical advantage for the woman (or many men, for that matter) to be able
to handle the load. Furthermore, if the winch isn't self-tailing, you need a
third person to tail. One way to make things
slightly easier is to use a snatch block to lead the halyard to one of the
primary winches aboard. But even with a larger winch, this approach can still
be too much work. Of course, this method doesn't allow you to get aloft by
yourself. And that's one of the drawbacks - you have to really trust the
people at the winch, as they do have your life in their hands. (Couples:
don't try this right after an argument.) After the experiment with
the mast ladder, we next tried having my wife hoist me aloft in a bosun's
chair. But even with the help of our primaries, it was just too much work for
her. The only way I made any progress was by wrapping my arms and legs around
the mast and shinnying a few inches at a time to create slack in the halyard.
But this can lead to overrides on the winch. We had to find another way. Powered winches Depending on the
equipment aboard your boat, there are a couple of ways to lessen the effort
of this grinding. If you have electric primaries, getting someone aloft is as
easy as pressing a button. Lacking these, the next best bet would be to run
the tail of the halyard forward to a powered anchor windlass. If you do
decide to try either of these options, be especially careful with the last
few feet of hoist near the masthead. Without the feedback of a manual winch,
it may not be obvious when you have "two-blocked" the rig, and you
can jam the shackles in the masthead halyard sheave or even rip out the
attachment rings in the chair if you aren't careful. This is why some people
argue against the practice of using electric winches or powered windlasses in
this application. Counterweights aloft An alternative to having
your crew winch you aloft directly is to attach a heavy counterweight to one
end of an external halyard (internals won't work here) and hoist the weight
to the masthead instead. You then attach yourself to the other end of the
halyard and let gravity do the work as the counterweight drops. This is
supposed to be an old trick of singlehanders, who had no one around to help
with the grinding. And I suppose someone could use this technique to get
aloft if the crew weren't strong enough to handle the winch. Of course you
should at least take care that you weigh more than the counterweight, or you
could easily get stuck up there! I offer the following as
an example of just how ingenious sailors can be when there is a problem to be
solved, not as a recommended technique for getting aloft. My favorite version
of this involved someone hoisting aloft a large, empty, plastic container
with one end of a garden hose tied to the inside rim. Once it was in place,
the skipper turned on the water to fill the container, and rode up the mast
on the other end of the halyard as the container filled. If you do decide to
try something like this, please alert your dockmates so they can have their
video cameras ready.
Mastlift What if your partner
can't grind you aloft, and there's never a deck ape around to help when you
need one? In this case you might consider the Swisstech Mastlift. This is a
chain hoist with a 10:1 gear ratio, except that the load-bearing line is made
of Spectra, not chain. In practice, you shackle the Mastlift to a halyard,
attach the load-bearing line to a bosun's chair or climbing harness, unroll
the load-bearing line as you hoist the 15-pound cylinder to the masthead,
then cleat the halyard. Using the endless control line (with double internal
safety brakes), you then hoist yourself aloft. This is easily a one-person
job, with very little effort. It would be a good idea to lightly fasten a
line around the control line at deck level to prevent it from blowing away
and fouling, especially if you go up alone. For safety you would want to use
one of the backup methods mentioned above. Downsides to the Mastlift?
The first is that the size of the drum makes it a little more difficult to
get close to the masthead, as you are probably a foot lower than when using a
halyard alone. But the big drawback of the Mastlift is cost. When I contacted
the importer a couple of years ago, the introductory special prices were
$1,100 for the 45-foot hoist model, and $1,300 for the 82-foot model. At that
price not too many skippers will be buying them for their personal use. But
it would be a great item for a club to own, if you could just figure a way
around the inevitable liability issues. By the way, a solution to
the problem of not quite being able to reach the masthead from a chair or
harness is to fashion a pair of rope steps, each at the end of a four-foot
tether. Once you get as close to the masthead as possible, attach the tethers
to the crane with a carabiner. Then place your feet in the steps, and stand
up at the masthead. Hold yourself upright with a piece of line tied around
your waist and the mast. Mast Mate sells a Workbelt patterned after a
lineman's belt that is designed for just this application (see illustration).
An alternative to the tethers is to mount a pair of mast steps on either side
of the mast about four feet down. Block and tackle If your crew can't hoist
you aloft, and you can't afford a Mastlift, you might consider putting
together a block and tackle arrangement to help do the work. The simplest
version of this is to get a length of 1/2-inch line twice the length of your mast,
position a single block at the mid-point, and haul the block aloft on a
halyard. Attach one end of the line to your bosun's chair or climber's
harness with a good knot, grab the other end, and just haul yourself aloft. How much work is this?
Well, normally you find the mechanical advantage of any block and tackle by
counting the number of parts coming out of the moving block. With no moving
block, it seems as if there should be no mechanical advantage to this simple
rig. But for reasons that still confuse me, there is a 2:1 mechanical
advantage in this case, so that you are only lifting half your weight. (The
best way I can explain it is to point out that you have to haul in 100 feet
of line to raise yourself 50 feet.) So this is actually easier than it looks.
To reduce the effort further, you add extra parts to the tackle, but that can
add up to a lot of line. I learned about this
approach from rigger Brion Toss at one of his seminars, and thought I'd give
it a try. To reduce the effort a bit, I opted for a 3:1 mechanical advantage.
This meant putting together an upper single block with becket, a lower single
block, and a 1/2-inch line three times my mast's length, or 150 feet (see
Figure A on the next page). Brion also suggests using a Harken "Hexaratchet"
ratcheting block in the upper position, as it greatly reduces the effort
required to grip the line. This tackle approach will
work with either a bosun's chair or a climber's harness, but I use a
climber's harness knowing I need the feeling of security it provides. After
getting the line reeved through the blocks, I haul the upper block aloft with
a halyard, and shackle the lower block to my harness. For safety, I use a
second halyard attached to the harness, but any of the backup methods would
work.
Before hauling away,
there are two more techniques to mention. The first is how to belay the line
once you're up there. You can make do by passing a bight of the line through
the ring in your harness and making several half hitches with the loop. But I
like the technique Brion uses in which the standing part of the line is led
through a carabiner at the harness and then tied off using a special
mountaineering knot - the carabiner hitch (see illustration on next page).
This carabiner hitch is easy to tie and untie under load - a real advantage. I added a second
technique as a way to feel even more secure. It involves mounting an ascender
on the hauling part of the tackle and then rigging a three-foot tether
between the harness and the ascender. Each pull aloft is made easier by
having the comfortable handle of the ascender, rather than just the line, to
grip. At the bottom of each pull, I hold the line fast at the carabiner with
one hand and slide the ascender back up the hauling part with the other. The
added security comes from the short tether, as I could let go with both hands
and only slide back three feet at most. This addition also makes it easy to
stop and rest along the way. To get as close to the masthead as possible, I
remove the ascender from the line, two-block the tackle, and rig a carabiner
hitch. To descend, I just keep a wrap or two around the carabiner and slowly
lower myself to the deck. This combination of
tackle, climbing harness, and ascender is a real joy to use. With it I feel
secure enough that I've been known to go up the mast while underway just to
take pictures from the masthead. (It's amazing how small a 38-foot sailboat
looks from 50 feet up!) This approach is good for
singlehanders, as you don't need help from anyone on deck. And that means you
don't have to depend on anyone else for your safety. But if you do try this
approach alone, give some thought to keeping the tail of the line from
getting tangled in the rigging on deck. If the line gets caught, you won't be
able to lower yourself down. Brion's instructional video, Going Aloft,
features this approach. I highly recommend it. Line climbing Two final methods for
getting up your mast are based directly on mountaineering techniques and are
probably the least familiar to sailors. In these, you climb up a fixed line
with your feet in rope steps at the end of tethers rigged to the fixed line
with ascenders. You could use one of your halyards as the fixed line (if it's
the proper diameter), but since the cams of the ascenders are hard on the
line, I recommend hoisting aloft a separate length of 1/2-inch rope to reduce
halyard wear. I think of these two
methods as the "stair step" and the "inchworm," based on
the action used to climb the rope. The "stair step" method is
perhaps a little easier to understand. In this approach, two ascenders are
mounted on the fixed line, each attached to a rope step on the end of a
three- to four-foot tether. At least one of the ascenders is also attached
with a tether to your climber's harness (or to a safety harness if a bosun's
chair is used). To begin, position the steps above the deck, place your feet
in the steps, and grab the ascenders for support. Then raise one leg and its
corresponding ascender at the same time. After that, step up onto that upper
step, and finish by raising up the other leg and its corresponding ascender
to just under the first ascender.
By alternating one side
after the other, you can "stair step" your way up the line. You
will need to adjust the length of the tethers between the ascenders and the
steps to suit your reach and height, or you can purchase two triers at $24
each from a mountaineering store. These are short web ladders with four to
six steps in a line, about 15 inches apart. One of the steps should be at
just about the height you need. By comparison, the
"inchworm" method looks a little strange. This method works best
with a climber's harness, but a bosun's chair will work in a pinch. After
rigging your fixed line, attach a short tether of about three feet between
your harness and the first ascender. The second ascender is then added to the
line underneath the first and attached to a pair of rope steps, each on a
three- to four-foot tether (or a pair of triers). To begin climbing,
position the steps above the deck, place your feet in the steps, and grab the
fixed line for support. First, slide the upper ascender up the fixed line as
far as you can reach, then sit back to put your weight on the harness. Next,
slide the lower ascender up the line as far as possible while bringing your
knees up. Finally, extend your body and step up onto the steps, holding onto
the fixed line for balance. After that you extend the upper ascender up the
line again and sit back into the harness. Repeating these steps allows you to
"inchworm" your way up the line. You will need to experiment a bit
to find out how long the upper and lower tethers need to be for the most efficient
progress. The "inchworm"
method is probably slower, but the motion is a little easier to learn and
uses the strength of both legs at once to do the climbing. While the
"stair step" method can be faster, it can take some time to get the
hang of the technique (sort of like the diagonal stride in cross-country
skiing). A drawback to both line-climbing methods is that getting down can be
a little slow, since most ascenders are a little difficult to slide down a
line as you descend. With either of these methods,
be sure to practice a bit before tackling a big job. Both are well-suited for
use by singlehanders. You will, of course, want to use one of the safety
backup methods with or without crew on deck. Which is best for you? Which approach is best
for you depends on your boat, your age, and your bank account. Just like
everything else in sailing, each approach is a compromise, and no single
method is right for everyone. I like my current block-and-tackle rig, but if
I could afford it, I would have a Mastlift instead. I strongly suggest that
you consider trying a climber's harness for support aloft - unless you like
feeling insecure and terrified. Above all, please be safe up there. |
Article taken from Good
Old Boat magazine: Volume 2, Number 5, September/October 1999.
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