[Public-List] Main sheave update

[Kris Coward]

On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 01:36:10PM -0400, John Riley wrote:
> Aren't we getting a little melodramatic here?

Sorry about that, was just up the mast last night straightening out the
windex. It was raining, it was dark, and it was a little cold, and much
of the time there was a voice in my head repeating disbelief that "some
damned fool would want to be up here with the upper shrouds
disconnected".

> Even in our small town, there is an equipment rental firm that has
> "cherry pickers" that are more than adequate to do masthead work on an
> A-30, if you can get her alongside a proper seawall.  Many major
> boatyards have some sort of bucket truck / lift assembly that can
> likewise be used.

And these cost appreciably less than pulling the stick? It's not like
pulling the stick is a terribly expensive or difficult operation. I do
it every year with a handful of friends and a manually operated crane.
It costs me an evening, some snacks, and a case of beer.

> Could one not use halyards, perhaps doubled and reinforced, to secure
> the upper half of the mast for a short job?  They used to do stuff like
> this on the square riggers, at sea, all the time.  The stays and lowers
> are still in place, so it's not like the mast is an unsupported stick.

Depends on how many halyards are available. I figure 2 of them will be
in use holding up the bosun's chair. I suppose if you've got enough
spare line kicking around and an alternate location to attach it, you
could run your own rope shrouds if short on halyards. That said, it's so
straightforward (and useful in other ways, like inspecting the rig) to
take down the stick, that the square riggers can't possibly have been
working on a still-stepped mast for any reason other than the fact that
there was no nearby crane with which to unstep the mast.

> A similar apparatus as used to pull the mast could be constructed to
> help support it side-to-side, no?

Perhaps, but it begs the question: why bother?

> Pulling the mast may be BEST, and there are certainly other, very good
> reasons, to pull the mast.  But there are also SAFE ways to do this job
> without pulling mast, so that dropping the stick is NOT the "only"
> choice here.
> 
> All it takes is a little planning, a cold objective eye to the dangers
> and how to minimize them (there can be dangers in dropping the mast, as
> well) and execution of a good plan with discipline to not cut corners.

If you're anywhere near a mast crane and not dropping the mast for a job
like this, you are ipso facto cutting corners.

Sure dropping the mast isn't without peril (hell, 2 years ago I had the
extra downhaul loop pop off the hook on the crane; of course the sling
was still well hooked, and the downhaul was still attached to the sling,
so there was no damage, but any of my friends who were helping out that
year are quite happy to help me reinforce the point that you never stand
under a hoisted mast), but it's also nowhere near the big deal that some
people make it out to be. This is even more the case with a deck stepped
mast like we've got on our A30s.

Cheers,
Kris

P.S. I'm probably also just really cranky because this reluctance to
pull the mast reminds me of the time I helped a friend move his boat
through the Erie Canal, and when we were putting up his stick at the
other end, we had to wait for the mast crane in line behind a bunch of
folks who had clearly never stepped a mast before in their lives, and
thought it to be some sort of immensely difficult black art or
something. Naturally we helped them, but good god were they ever
neurotic about it all.

-- 
Kris Coward					http://unripe.melon.org/
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