Up The Mast

Saturday afternoon was pretty nice so I hauled out the TopClimber and all the relevant gear and went up the mast.  I made it all the way up on the first try, stopping at the spreaders for a new pair of boots, stopping at all relevant rigging terminations for appropriate service.  I got to the top, serviced the wind-speed sensor, lubed and otherwise serviced everything up there, and lubed the entire mainsail track on the way down.  I spent a total of nearly three hours aloft.  It really does take a lot more time than you think.

I'm very sore!  I work out a bit but, aside from the muscles used for actually going up, there's a lot of twisting, holding yourself out to the end of the spreaders, gripping at weird angles, etc.  Nothing but more of the same could adequately prepare a body for this.  I'm not sure I could have made two trips in the same day if it was necessary to get parts or something like that.

The TopClimber is a pretty good success.  It obviously would  have been easier to have someone else winch my considerable bulk to the top - someone else doing the work, so to speak, but now I know I can do it on my own when necessary.  I used a third ascender (in addition to the TopClimber's two) on a separate halyard connected to a regular deck-harness as a safety backup.  It all felt pretty stable and secure but it was very slow both up and down. 

If I didn't stop at the spreaders it would have probably taken at least 20 minutes up and a similar amount of time down.  This is really not something you'd want to do alone at sea with just the auto-pilot in control  There are too many things that could happen that you would need to get to quicker than 20 minutes.  Too, any kind of rig, that far aloft (50ft) is going to be a very wild ride with even the slightest boat motion.  I could easily feel motion, transmitted through the docklines, from someone walking down the dock.

Based on this very limited experience, my observation is that the static climbing line works better near the mast.  The ATN site recommends you lead the bottom of the static line to the rail so you have room to dangle and spin.  I did this and it worked okay but when I got higher I still ended up near the mast.  It turned out to be pretty easy and confidence-inspiring to be able to straddle the mast with my feet and knees.  The mast being nearby is also pretty easy to hold on to.

The next time I go up I need to remember to make the static line bar tight.  It does say this in the ATN directions but I under-estimated this and had to deal with a little slack below the lower ascender.  A tighter static line would probably make it all go faster as well.

The next time I go up I also need to remember to bring my camera.