[Alberg30] 5 gallon bucket

[George Dinwiddie]

Thanks.  That account is not a humorous as the one I was recalling, but 
it is interesting.  From pp. 222-223:

	David Guthrie ... was alone in mid-Atlantic aboard his small sloop when 
the end of the main halyard ran aloft.  This necessitated a trip to the 
masthead in waters that were far from smooth.  Guthrie had a large conic 
sea anchor aboard, and it occurred to him that he might be able to 
utilize its drag to assist him in going aloft.  His plan was to keep 
sailing under a headsail and to attach a bosun's chair to one end of a 
spare halyard and secure the sea anchor to the halyard's other end. 
Then he would throw overboard the sea anchor, which would remain 
relatively stationary, and the boat's headway would pull the chair with 
Guthrie in it to the masthead.  The plan also required that the 
single-hander carry aloft the end of a trip-line leading to the apex of 
the sea anchor so that it could be tripped to allow descending after the 
runaway halyard had been retrieved.

	The idea was a good one, but its execution brought about some 
unanticipated problems.  One was that the boat's speed of between four 
and five knots hoisted Guthrie entirely too fast, and a more serious 
difficulty occurred when the trip-line was found to be too short as a 
result of its having been led inadvertently under the stern pulpit. 
This mistake caused the trip line to act before Guthrie was at the 
masthead, and down he came, fortunately with no serious injuries 
resulting.  Once he was back on deck and the trip-line became slack, he 
was yanked aloft again by the strain of the sea anchor.  After 
returniing to the deck again, Guthrie was somewhat shaken, and having 
been "hoist by his own petard," he decided to postpone the experiment 
until the following day.

	I never heard whether the halyard was eventually retrieved by this 
unusual method....


chrishardy wrote:
> the original story is told in singlehanded sailing by henderson   chris
> 

-- 
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
   George Dinwiddie                             gdinwiddie at alberg30.org
   The gods do not deduct from man's allotted span those hours spent in
   sailing.                                    http://www.Alberg30.org/
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------

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