Adventures of Sailing Vessel Merganser: Splice of Life

E. had asked a while back if he could go up the mast. At that time, J. had helped an older friend of ours to change his steaming light and even went to the top to reattach his mast-head anchor light. E. thought it would be cool to learn how to do this, too.

Before we left, we decided it would be prudent to change our steaming light. After all, it has not worked the entire time we've owned MERGANSER.

So tonight E. and J. rigged up the chair to send E. aloft.

First, a note about our chair set-up. We took the idea straight out of Lin and Larry Pardey's book, Capable Cruiser. But we've also seen something very similar in Hervey Garrett Smith's The Arts of the Sailor. We use our 1/2 inch three stand nylon stern anchor rode, two double blocks with beckets and a hook, plus the necessary shackles. We attach the chain hook to one block (leaving it permanently attached). This shackle also attaches this block to the chair. The other block is attached to whatever halyard we are using by tying a bowline. The rode is then rove through the blocks so the standing end comes down from above and can be used to haul ourselves up. The halyard is raised while letting out the appropriate amount of rode and securely tied off. Then we sit in the chair and can haul ourselves aloft (only pulling a quarter of our weight). The rode/halyard can be tied off onto the hook to work with both hands or twisted around the hook to slowly descend under control.

[Note: 3 November 2014 - Lin and Larry Pardey's November Tip is about how they rig their gantline, follow the link to find out more about it.]

We also tend to run two safety lines. Safety Line A is controlled by whomever is in the chair. Safety Line A goes around the mast twice before being tied off to itself. If something were to happen, Safety Line A would slow (even stop?) our descent. The other (Safety Line B) is a spare halyard attached to the chair, attended to by one of us on deck, and the slack kept off it. From time to time (like when the person in the chair has stopped to work, or is moving their safety line above or below the spreaders), this line is tied off. Again it is another safety precaution.

Once E. and J. had things set up, E. went up on a practice run to be sure he was comfortable.

"This feels good, Dad. I feel comfortable with how this works. Can I just keep going?"

"Sure." So E. hauled himself up to the steaming light, while J. kept the slack out of the second halyard (tying off from time to time). E. went aloft with what we thought was the right size bulb.

When he got to the fixture, he removed the casing and called down, "Thanks for taking the bulb out, Dad. This will make it easier. " Only thing was, J. hadn't removed the bulb. Well, that would explain why the light wasn't working. We were hoping this would be an easy fix. So far it looked it was going to be.

E. inserted the new bulb and we tried the switch.