June 10th 2019
Before we could leave again there was a daunting job to be done. We had to climb the mast to fix the radar reflector. There are many ways to get up there, and except paying someone to climb up there for you, they are all equally discouraging because it means someone needs to go 13 meters up. You need a bosun chair or a climbing harness, and then connect that to something like a mainsail halyard. Some people then use a winch to haul someone up, others say it’s very dangerous to use the winch. We found a movie of a guy explaining a way to climb in your mast alone with the aid of 2 pulley blocks and a Prusik knot. You sort of pull yourself up, the weight lessened by the pulley load reduction effect, and you use the Prusik knot as a lock to prevent yourself from slipping down. We decided to give that method a try, because you can do it alone if necessary, and it looked more controlled.
We already have a bosun chair and a big carabiner to fasten it to something, only the something is missing. So to get our equipment complete, we needed to pay the local marine store a visit to buy the rope and pulley blocks. But which size of rope and pulleys to choose? After all, it’s your life dangling from the top of the mast. The guy from the marine store did a lot of work in an on sailboat masts, and was an avid climber in his spare time. He ensured us that, yes the pulley might eye a wee bit small, but it can handle four tons. That’s a teensy bit more than the average weight of a human being. To delay it trice, and thus reduce the load (our body weight) to one third, we bought rope three times times the length of the mast. The clever readers will already have spotted the error…
Back on the boat we started to fabricate the contraption. You connect one pulley to the main sail halyard, and one pulley to the bosun chair. One end of the rope is connected to the pulley near the bosun chair, than it runs to the pulley connected to the halyard. Then it runs back again to the bosun chair, back up again to the halyard, and the other end dangles down freely. That’s the end you pull yourself up with. And here we come to the error in our thinking. Because following this rationale we didn’t need a rope with three, but four times the length of the mast. Blast! Now we only had 2 lines running back and forth between the pulleys, reducing the load only in half.
We gave it a try anyway. The last thing we had to do was make a Prusik knot on the free end of the rope, and connect the loop of the Prusik knot to the carabiner that is connected to the bosun chair. Every time you pull yourself up, you slide the Prusik knot a bit higher. If you would accidentally let go of the rope, the Prusik knot fastens itself on the rope by your weight. We tested it half a meter above the deck, it works perfectly! And once you pull yourself up again, the pressure is off the knot enabling it to move.
After a few tests the dreaded moment had come. Someone had to climb the mast. Carmen has a severe fear of heights, so Jeroen volunteered to go. But three meters up he was overcome with high anxiety as well and had to descent. Despite her fear of heights Carmen decided to give it a try, with Jeroen securing the line below. And somehow she managed to climb to the top and fix the radar reflector. It is really scary to hang up there only suspended by what seems like tiny hooks and threads. The wind blows harder up there and every movement of the boat is magnified. Looking down is agony. And although the weight was reduced by the pulleys, it was still an extreme workout. Hopefully it is not something we have to do again any day soon.