jamie N
Well-Known Member
Many of us have jackstays running the length of our boat. There's been many the mention of best practice, but as far as I can recall, no mention of being secured from above?
On my GK24, today I'd a trial run of using a spare halyard clipped onto my harness. This did allow me full access everywhere without any danger of falling into the water. The obvious fault with this is that if I fell over and the boat was heeling, I'd end up doing an 'Alex Thomson-Hugo Boss' impersonation, which would be a bad thing.
The simple way around this is to have the separate piece of webbing, which reaches from the jackstay to about waist height, and is able to slide along the already installed jackstay, and clips onto the safety harness, thus the safety harness has 2 points of attachment which allow enough mobility to kneel on the deck, or work at the forestay or mast, without the possibiliity of going over the side.
This is specific to my boat, where I do have 2 spare halyards, the spinnaker and one that I use for my genoa sleeve, neither of which would be normally used whilst I'm single handing. The genoa halyard is entirely external of the mast from a separate block.
The halyard does reach back to my cockpit, and is easy enough to attach, as is the line to the jackstay, it's very easy to attach both, stand up and take the tension on the halyard, and then wander around that side of the boat. Tripping over the jackstay line was the same risk as before. The halyard line will always want to be the wrong side of the spreader, they do that, we know that it's a fact of life that we have to 'whip' it around to clear it.
I've never seen this 'method' used before, and will continue to use it and 'suss it out', as it just seems so much safer.
Anyone seen it before?
On my GK24, today I'd a trial run of using a spare halyard clipped onto my harness. This did allow me full access everywhere without any danger of falling into the water. The obvious fault with this is that if I fell over and the boat was heeling, I'd end up doing an 'Alex Thomson-Hugo Boss' impersonation, which would be a bad thing.
The simple way around this is to have the separate piece of webbing, which reaches from the jackstay to about waist height, and is able to slide along the already installed jackstay, and clips onto the safety harness, thus the safety harness has 2 points of attachment which allow enough mobility to kneel on the deck, or work at the forestay or mast, without the possibiliity of going over the side.
This is specific to my boat, where I do have 2 spare halyards, the spinnaker and one that I use for my genoa sleeve, neither of which would be normally used whilst I'm single handing. The genoa halyard is entirely external of the mast from a separate block.
The halyard does reach back to my cockpit, and is easy enough to attach, as is the line to the jackstay, it's very easy to attach both, stand up and take the tension on the halyard, and then wander around that side of the boat. Tripping over the jackstay line was the same risk as before. The halyard line will always want to be the wrong side of the spreader, they do that, we know that it's a fact of life that we have to 'whip' it around to clear it.
I've never seen this 'method' used before, and will continue to use it and 'suss it out', as it just seems so much safer.
Anyone seen it before?
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