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Mark Borgerson

In article ,
says...
Wayne.B wrote:
On Sat, 23 Jan 2010 12:15:12 -0800 (PST), Frogwatch
wrote:

Bosun's chair: Not bad but does require that somebody else has your
life in their hands which I do not like.

On my old sailboats we always made it standard practice to have a
second halyard attached to the bosuns chair, which was tailed to a
winch by a second person. In all of the many trips up the mast, the
second halyard never came into play but it was reassuring to know it
was there.

That's the way I did it recently.
The second halyard on a second winch didn't actually carry any loads
as it was always a little behind, and at the top was slacked off a bit
to allow the main to hoist my head up above the top.

But it made for more confidence in the two new crew handling the ropes!

Hey---you had helpers. No Fair. I was doing this all on my own. No
helpers down below to crank winches.

On the plus side, I was 20 pounds lighter then (1974) and the
boat was an Islander 24. Full (and pretty heavy) keel and
not a terribly tall mast. If something went really bad---
like the halyard parting, I would have slid about 10
feet until my feet hit either the spreaders or the
coachtop. With a bit of luck, somebody in the marina
would have heard my yell and come to investigate.

It was actually much scarier going up the electronics mast
on a DE underway in the North Pacific. Even though there
was a good ladder and a proper safety harness with dual
clips (one always attached to a rung above me), there
were diesel fumes in the face and rolls such that I saw
a lot of seawater below me at each end. Heck of a place
for a junior spook officer, but the bosun's mates had
no clue about preamplifiers and my maintenance tech was
so seasick he could hardly walk. I had taken the
basic rock climbing class at Yosemite, understood
safety harnesses and had no particular fear of heights
(at least not when I can hold on tight!).

Mark Borgerson

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