Climbing the mast. Anything I've forgotten?

A few years ago we had a problem with the genoa furling gear, which required me to go up to the mast head. My wife is not strong enough to winch me up, and I'm not strong enough to climb up. We anchored where there was another boat, and "borrowed" someone to tail on the winch. That was fine, but as we generally sail in some of the remoter areas, I prefer to be independent. I have fitted folding mast steps, and they are wonderful. If I'm going up for a little job, I wear a harness, and my wife takes up the halyard slack, through a clutch, on the halyard winch. If I know that it's going to take a while, I use a bosun's chair for more comfort.

The steps are great, and I would recommend them, particularly to people who go "beyond the beaten track", and want to be self-sufficient.
 
Mmmmmm . . . . It does not seem to have been mentioned in 5 pages, but mountain climbing gear (ascenders and grigri) allow you to go up a mast solo completely securely . . . without the holes and weight and windage and tangle possibilities of steps. This is a really well proven and worked out technique (by the rock community). The necessary gear fits in a medium size zip lock bag. You don't need big muscles or to be super fit to do it (I certainly am not).

When my wife is on board we use the windless drum, and I have zero concern about the windless somehow jamming on. First that's a very unlikely failure mode. And second the halyard runs thru a clutch, which is closed when I am going up, so my wife would just let the halyard tail go and I would be securely in place. I think the more likely risk for a novice is getting fingers caught caught/pulled into the drum, but my wife knows enough to not let that happen. I personally believe some speed in going up (with the powered drum) reduces risk vs a much slower manual winch ascent - but there is no data to prove that as the incident rate of both is very low.

But when I am single handing, or when the wife is busy, I use the rock climbing gear. I went up twice this summer (I was single handing) - I have a 23m mast - B&G wand problems at the masthead, and it was simple and straightforward.
 
+1 for the mountain climbing gear approach - I can recommend a mast climbing course run by Barney Green at Higher safety Ltd. Not connected, just satisfied customer.
 
As mentioned above - ascender, gri, additional pulley, fall arrester, rigger's harness, bosun's chair.
He also had a mast climbing 'device' - can't remember which one though.
 
Graham_Wright said:
Can you describe it - I am very interested. Was it metal or fabric and did he use it?
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It was metal - 'two feet' type. He gave us the chance to use it. I didn't, as I was there to learn the other technique. There were about 5 of us on the course - not sure if any of the others used it. Might it have been yours?
 
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