Mastaclimba v Easy Climb

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neil1967

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I am looking to buy a device to aid mast climbing (I have a 40' yacht which, in a few years, I hope to use as a warm water liveaboard). I have seen and tried the mastaclimba at a boatshow and it looks to be a very well engineered piece of kit and is around £200. The Easy Climb uses the same principle, but is basically a piece of plywood and a cleat - it looks a bit Heath Robinson, but looking at the video it clearly works - it is around £75 from Seateach.

Has anyone any experience of either - or preferably both - of these, and would you care to share you opinions of effectiveness and value for money.

Thanks

Neil
 
I guess it's the easy climb type that I made. I couldnt afford the £75 so made my own, plywood two foot holes a cleat and a guide.
It works really well and gets my 72 year old bones up the mast no problem.
You need the climbing rope tight at the base ( as well as the top!!) and need to free the cam and use anothe rmethod to get down (in a controlled manner)
Usuall requirement for safety line etc.
 
I've just bought a Mast Ladder from George Deffee (http://www.gdeffee.freeserve.co.uk/) and can recommend it as another option. Because it uses sail sliders that fit into your mainsail track it is very stable. I use a climbing harness and ascender on a separate halyard as a safety line, and for 'resting' in the seat.

I also saw the mastaclimba at the show and it did look well-built. It may be harder to get down than get up, especially if, like me, you'd like to be able to do it single handed.
 
I have mountaineering gear to up and down on the same bit of rope..

The advantage is that I am not relying on someone else to let me down carefully or let me fall!!
 
hrchivers said:
I also saw the mastaclimba at the show and it did look well-built. It may be harder to get down than get up, especially if, like me, you'd like to be able to do it single handed.
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Two handed, the descent is by being lowered in the bosun's chair.

Single handed, the descent is by abseiling down a separate line.

(Single handed, the abseiling line is used to take the weight of the climber (in a chair or harness) during ascent i.e. replacing the winch taking up the slack).
 
I have owned a Mastclimb, which is pretty much identical to the Mastclimba, for around 20 years. We have used it many times with my wife at the winch and me doing the climbing. The only problems are that it needs padding to prevent clashing with the mast and the fixed line needs to be very tight. Otherwise it's excellent.
April044.jpg


That said, it is a simple device that could be made easily. I have seen a few DIY plywood ones that seemed perfectly satisfactory.
 
vyv_cox said:
I have owned a Mastclimb, which is pretty much identical to the Mastclimba
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Graham_Wright said:
Don't be rude!
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Well, maybe not quite identical, but it does the same thing in a similar way.

The Mastaclimba is very elegantly engineered, but there's no way I'd spend £200 on one. Not when I can build something along the lines of the Mastclimb for the price of a decent cam cleat.

Pete
 
prv said:
Well, maybe not quite identical, but it does the same thing in a similar way.

The Mastaclimba is very elegantly engineered, but there's no way I'd spend £200 on one. Not when I can build something along the lines of the Mastclimb for the price of a decent cam cleat.

Pete
Click to expand...

Absolutely! I made one as well. Don't forget you need something to release the cam cleats on the way down (or you can leave it up there to be retrieved when you lower the attaching halyard).
 
nigelmercier said:
What does one say about a company that is using a freeserve web site?
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That despite the web-presence being a bit amateur, the ladder is excellent, well-engineered and George Deffee makes them to order; he appears to run a one-man business. He was patient about my idiot questions on the phone, made mine a few steps longer than the basic model to ease getting to the top of the boom and met a demanding deadline. It is a brilliant piece of kit, and really makes mast access dead easy. I've used it to sort out twisted halliards, recover lost halliards and check on a broken Windex.

A friend borrowed it a year or so ago, and even though he wasn't able to use the slugs in his mast track, it still worked well enough to recover a lost spinaker halliard.

As far as I'm concerned, it is one of my better purchases.

BTW, they aren't all that expensive.
 
vyv_cox said:
I have owned a Mastclimb, which is pretty much identical to the Mastclimba, for around 20 years. We have used it many times with my wife at the winch and me doing the climbing. The only problems are that it needs padding to prevent clashing with the mast and the fixed line needs to be very tight. Otherwise it's excellent.
April044.jpg


That said, it is a simple device that could be made easily. I have seen a few DIY plywood ones that seemed perfectly satisfactory.
Click to expand...

I saw this at Earls Court boat show many years ago. The person on the stand was not interested so I went home and made my own plywood version and it's still in use.
 
For S/H use the Topclimber appeals most as it gets you up and down.
The ladder also does that but it would be a lot of faf (on my boat) extracting half of the sail from the track then feeding in the ladder slides. Also not good if it is the main that is stuck half way up. The secondary function as a Drogue is a good idea.
 
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