Up the Mast!

 

Sorry there are no pictures of our butts up the mast, but here is info on how we climb our mast. We use a rung strap ladder that goes in the mainsail track, pulled up by the mainsail halyard. ( by Claire )

the above is a good photo of the rungs pulled far apart showing left an right side.

The bummer is we have to take all the sail slugs out to access the slug slot, to get the ladder slugs in.

Therefore making a mainsail mast mess since we relaxed the yellow lazy jacks to get between them as ya climb up. We'll have to put it all back by raising the sail and dropping it again anyway.

One of two LED (shielded, waterproof, approved, etc) lights i put up there.

I put it in my bag i had around my shoulder.

We used side ropes to keep the rungs apart in a couple sections.

A downhaul rope pulls the ladder straight down.

This photo does not show the rungs pulled apart well, but we checked that they were going to be able to be pulled aprt as we pulled it up and pulled the side lines later.

As you near the top, the rungs are harder to pull sideways with a rope, so ya have to take more time getting your foot in the step rung.

53' high. The view was great. We had nice calm overcast weather on a canal with little traffic.

I kept a steady pace of step and pull my self up, but Dave was pulling up the slack on my safety line which helped a little. I took a breath with each step and did not get tired.

Was a little nervous - super careful to grip everything well, hold myself still, and not pull on any important wires. I had to unlock the base, pull up the cover and put it in the bag. i took the old bulbs out and brought them down for Dave to inspect. We replaced them with new bulbs that he had to adjust for the age of the base by sanding off one fo the knobs that was too high and would have prevented me getting the bulb deep enough to make contact. Newer bulbs have the lock knobs at same level. Older ones have one high and one low.