Best way to attach halyard to bosun's chair

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electra

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Intend to send daughter (29) up mast to retrieve lazy jack cord from second spreader and would appreciate advice re lines. In theory she won't be aloft for long

Thought I would attach main halyard to bosun's chair but tie knot rather than use shackle. Is bowline enough ?

For safety I would use another halyard e.g. spinnaker, to be attached to daughter's lifejacket D-ring. I don't have any other harness.

Alternatively, I could also attach second line to bosun's chair.

Thoughts ?
 
Job done

Got email this morning from YBW saying I am now approved ! Better late than never.

Anyway got job done over the weekend. Had few problems with XM bosuns chair (no instructions and not at all obvious how it should fit) so borrowed Spinlock alternative which worked perfectly.

Still have small question about best way to connect main halyard to chair. Halyard where it connects by shackle to top of mainsail is wire. Very strong. No doubt I was wrong to use shackle but was there any alternative ?
 
I was always told to tie the halyard, not rely on the shackle. Wire halyard obviously makes tying impossible, but was there a topping lift, genny or spinny halyard that could have been tied on as second line of defence?

If the shackle was the only possibility, I'd have looked to see if there was a way to tape or seize it, so that it couldn't come undone accidentally.
 
some of the earlier XM bosun's chairs had minor stitching problems, and were cheerfully repaired by XM.

XM Yachting
Hamilton Business Park
Botley Road
Hedge End
Southampton
SO30 2HE

Tel: +44 1489 778850
Fax: +44 870 751 1950
Email:sales@navimo.co.uk


They did a very good product recall service.
 
If you have a rope spinnaker halyard use that to attach the bosuns chair, with a bowline. If there is a shackle on the end, simply double the line through the ring on the chair, and tie a bowline using the doubled line. You can then attach the shackle to the ring to keep it out of the way. Bring the main halyard round the shrouds to the front of the mast and use it as a safety line attached to a separate harness with a crutch strap, and not to the bosuns chair. As it has a wire strop and shackle you will have to use the shackle. Note that snap shackles are unsafe to use, but a proper halyard shackle or a normal screw shackle is acceptable (though not ideal IMHO) on the backup safety line.

If you don't have a separate harness, you should buy one before sending anyone aloft again.
 
Definitely I would always tie on rather than use a shackle. I did some rock climbing in my misspent youth, and we were always tought to tie on with a figure of eight.

Its dead easy, you tie exactly the same as a normal fig of eight stopper, but keeping the knot loose and with a long tail. You then take the tail through your harness, and feed it back through the knot, then pulling it tight.

Handy animation here: http://www.animatedknots.com/fig8follow/index.php
 
I have an XM chair and a couple of climbers ascenders, one on a home made stirrup and one on a short strop carabeenered to the chair. I climb rope halyard which is tied around the boom and winched tight, by standing up and sitting down, moving each ascender in turn with swmbo taking the slack on spinnaker halyard or topping lift tied to lifejacket safety harness c/w croths straps if she is around. It's no effort at all.

I'm terrified of heights but managed to get to the top of my radar reflector to tie of lazy jack eyes for my home made stack-pack last weekend, on the hard, solo and with no problems except rapid breathing!
 
Tie rope halyards to the chair, as everyone says. If you are going to go up on a wire halyard with a rope tail then it'll have to be a shackle, but I know some people say such halyards shouldn't be used for this purpose at all due to the risk of the rope/wire splice failing. All-wire halyards on drums (if you have a big old boat) are also frowned upon because there isn't usually any positive locking of the drum, only a friction clutch.

Pete
 
After a few too many fatal accidents with bowlines, the climbing schools now teach the rethreaded figure if eight. It's what I use when going aloft.
 
I have a Compass bosun's chair which came with a D ring. As soon as you put a load on it, it capsizes concentrating the webbing in one corner. Despite telling Compass about this many years ago, I think they are still so fitted.

For our MastaClimba demos, we cut the ring off and tied on the halyard with a fisherman's bend. This gives two turns round the webbing to reduce the stress concentration and is arguably the most secure knot in the book. But the important point is that it is very short. A bowline will become chock-a-block a few inches before a fisherman's bend which will allow you to get that bit nearer the masthead.

Incidentally, at Beaulieu Boat Jumble yesterday, we spent some time with a rock climber. He helped proving the viability of a single handed MastaClimba ascent using a Grigi to carry the chair/harness. The Grigi is secured to the chair and a line lead from the chair round a block hoisted to the masthead. The descending line passes through the locking part of the Grigi. For descent, the feet are disengaged from the MastaClimba and you can then lower yourself under control with the Grigi.

I confess to having been sceptical about the security of this compared with the two-handed technique but the rock climbers use Grigis without reported problems.

It was a bit cumbersome having to take up the slack on the ascent because it is necessary to heave the Grigi line upwards. However, I happened to be using a two sheave block and the tail end of the hoisting line could be fed back up and down allowing a downwards pull which was faster and more comfortable. The disadvantage is that you need to double the length of the line. The Grigi I bought was £52 which is a lot cheaper than the device we were developing for the single-hander. I am not too proud to admit we can now abandon that!

For the recored;- counting yesterdays demo, 587 ascents up our demo mast all with same kit. No disasters, severed limbs and no damage to the rope.
 
If you have to use the wire halyard, after securing the shackle and taping it, use a sail tie as a back up: rolling hitch onto the halyard and the tie the other end onto the bosuns chair.

The reason that shackles can come undone when someone is on a bosuns chair is that during the climb, there is much more twisting and turning and loading unloading of the shackle/ring than you will get when hoisting/lowering a sail or when sailing, hence the risk of the shackle accidentally opening.
 
pteron said:
After a few too many fatal accidents with bowlines, the climbing schools now teach the rethreaded figure if eight. It's what I use when going aloft.
Click to expand...

Probably because the bowline knot needs to be "close" and "tight".
If the rope is very dry, (or caked with salt) there is sometimes risk of slip in the knot.
It is therefore prudent to wet the rope first, then fashion the bowline, then tighten, and then use it.
 
NormanS said:
I have mast steps.:D:D
Click to expand...

steps.jpg


(Of course, the plural of "anecdote" is not "data", and trousers injure thousands every year yet we don't decide to avoid them.)

Pete
 
Too true. I also have mast steps and have never climbed them without a safety line. Rather than a bosun's chair I use a climbing harness, much better suited to using steps but also easier to use than a chair if you are going to try and climb the mast rather than being winched up. Also much cheaper and more secure.
 
Thanks

I originally intended this thread to be a short, sharp quest for advice before the event. Because of timing this was not to be. My daughter successfully went up the mast with main halyard and spinnaker halyard both attached to the borrowed bosun's chair. :D

I take the point that a separate harness would have been better to avoid a single point of failure. I will take heed of the consensus that it is better to use knots than shackles, and if you must use a shackle then tape it and maybe an extra line between halyard and chair. Also, use of figure of eight with a follow through seems to be the preferred choice of knot. I appreciate there are many alternatives available e.g steps but if you have never seen the options in use it is difficult to judge the merits.

On one previous occasion I saw a topping lift being used as the safety line but I was not convinced of its strength in an emergency so I personally would avoid that.

In summary, however, thank you all for the advice.
 
I find myself worryingly ignorant of this subject and appreciative of the clearly good advice, I would have happily used a shackle! It prompted me to google and search this forum for some definitive first principle guidance, with limited success. Clearly you would not send someone up the mast without an second and independent safety line, so I assume that we need at least 2 people on deck, each operating separate winches with the halyard secured at a length that would stop short of the man aloft hitting the deck! My questions therefore: 1) are my assumptions correct, 2) is there anything else I should consider and 3) would it be acceptable to use an electric windlass to take some of the effort out of the winching?
 
Another thing that seems to have been missed was that the halyards used should be internal to the mast (in one direction). i.e. Do NOT do this on a halyard that goes up and down outside the mast and just passes through a block at the top.

Hopefully by the lack of a mention, this point was already assumed by all.....

(PS - I use the double figure eight knot on both halyards although if I go up alone then it's using three prusik knots spread between two halyards).
 
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