Marveling at the work of the crew aboard space shuttle Atlantis today reminded me that going to sea shares a lot in common with space exploration: the prolonged periods of isolation, the close quarters, the food and drinks sailing across the cabin.
If you accept the analogy, then climbing the mast while underway is the sailor’s spacewalk.
The July issue of Practical Sailor, soon to be available online, reviewed nine different bosun chairs, the essential tool for any sailor planning to go aloft. It was disappointing to see that only one manufacturer of the bosun chairs that we reviewed, Brion Toss, provided thorough guidance on the skills and techniques for safely ascending a mast.
Most of the other bosun chair makers made sure to shield themselves with warnings, but offered very little instruction.
How many things are wrong with this picture?
Not surprisingly, some of the better equipment and instruction for climbing a mast come from mountaineering sources. As riggers like Toss have long known, the gear and techniques used in making vertical ascents up rock faces or trees can be applied to climbing masts, too. Many of the tools and techniques Toss discusses in his excellent instructional video, Going Aloft, are adapted from mountain-rescue climbing. If you have any doubts about going aloft, the video is an excellent primer.
Here are few of tips Toss shares:
Harness and clothing: Although not as comfortable as traditional chairs, harnesses bring you closer to the top of the mast and are more secure. Wear long paints and good shoes.
Halyards: Use two halyards; one primary, one safety. One should be an external halyard on a ratchet block leading from your harness back to you, so that you can have control over your own safety and ascent/descent.
Shackles and winches: Don’t rely on snap shackles or self-tailing jaws on winches. To attach the halyard to the harness, use locking screw-pin shackles or a buntline knot, which brings you closer to the masthead sheave than a bowline.
Tools: Always bring vice grips and a non-folding rigging knife aloft. Toss also brings a crescent wrench welded to a marlin spike. Attach a lanyard to all tools.
Going aloft at sea: To reduce swinging, use a carabiner to secure your harness to a jackline halyard run tightly from the masthead to deck.
Mast steps: Steps running the length of the mast can be problematic, but they are a good idea at the mast bottom, for handling the mainsail, and at the top of the mast, for relieving weight on the harness or chair while working at the masthead.
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Good information, thank you. Though I’m curious as to why you label mast steps “problematic”?
Thom,
The main ones would be added cost, added hassle of installation, possible corrosion points between screws/rivets and the mast, possible fouling chafe points for any external halyards, and — depending on the type used, possible chafe on mainsail (although this is generally rare). I might add the temptation to climb without a harness in an emergency, something that I ran into with my ratlines (when I was still young and foolish).
We looked at mast steps a while back, and will be looking at some new ones soon, but the principles are effectively the same and all have one or more of the above drawbacks.
Here’s our mast step test.
Oh, and they do break.
Darrell