Danny Jo
Well-Known Member
More about mast climbing. I had a practical tutorial last night on rope climbing with jumars. My tutor is tall, wiry and fit, as befits a man who once scaled Nelson's column in an attempt to save the world from something that seemed very important at the time (others have done it too, but he and his partner are I think the only ones to have got over the plinth overhang without the help of a ladder).
I said "Er, it's a little windy, isn't it?" as my cap was whisked off my head and blown over half a dozen neighbouring boats, propped up in the yard. I thought: just a couple of Jumars and an abseiling device, simple really, but then he tipped his rucksac out on the foredeck, and out tumbled a tangle of strops and lines with fancy names, heaps of caribineers, etc. He didn't use a safety rope, but he was always fastened to at least two points.
My tutor was most concerned not by the prospect that I might fall off or that the boat might blow over, but by the possibility that he might have to climb up to get me down. Going up with jumars is a cinch (and would have been easier if I had been lighter) but coming down, with cold hands and fading light, was too slow to be practicable, so I was shown how to switch to an abseiling device. (I got only 5/10 because I cheated and stood on a handy set of cross trees.)
I need a bit of practice to get jumaring up a mast to the stage of not looking a total wally. But abseiling down - what a joy.
The exercise would have been easier, and safer, with two spinnaker halyards, but my instructor only discovered the second at the end of the lesson. I wasn't entirely happy about trying it on the hard in 15 - 20 knots, but Freestyle has a very rigid wooden hull, supported by 16 pit props, and there was no discernable movement on the mast.
Must find someone who can teach me to dive . . .
I said "Er, it's a little windy, isn't it?" as my cap was whisked off my head and blown over half a dozen neighbouring boats, propped up in the yard. I thought: just a couple of Jumars and an abseiling device, simple really, but then he tipped his rucksac out on the foredeck, and out tumbled a tangle of strops and lines with fancy names, heaps of caribineers, etc. He didn't use a safety rope, but he was always fastened to at least two points.
My tutor was most concerned not by the prospect that I might fall off or that the boat might blow over, but by the possibility that he might have to climb up to get me down. Going up with jumars is a cinch (and would have been easier if I had been lighter) but coming down, with cold hands and fading light, was too slow to be practicable, so I was shown how to switch to an abseiling device. (I got only 5/10 because I cheated and stood on a handy set of cross trees.)
I need a bit of practice to get jumaring up a mast to the stage of not looking a total wally. But abseiling down - what a joy.
The exercise would have been easier, and safer, with two spinnaker halyards, but my instructor only discovered the second at the end of the lesson. I wasn't entirely happy about trying it on the hard in 15 - 20 knots, but Freestyle has a very rigid wooden hull, supported by 16 pit props, and there was no discernable movement on the mast.
Must find someone who can teach me to dive . . .
