To the Top

To the Top

by | Jan 14, 2014

Hello everyone! It's your favorite blog post writer! Me! Today, you will read about my daring experience climbing to the top of the mast to fix the broken wind indicator. (That I totally didn't break going under a bridge a wee bit to short for us.)

Now, standing from the nice, safe, stable boat, one could have some pretty bold words. For example. “Climbing to the top of that mast will be a sinch.” I'll come back to this statement explaining how I was wrong.

So I strap myself in to the bosun's chair. (If you are unfamiliar with one it's what Donald Duck sat in when he was painting his boat.) Now I started to be hoisted. As I reach around 40ft up I was begining to have second thoughts about my boastful words. None the less, I reached the top.

The wind indicator (that tells us the direction of the wind.) was about 3inchs out of my reach. Since I was lifted up as far as I could be lifted I had to tie a line around the two shrouds to create a makeshift step. Never in my life did I need as much courage to stand up. For when I stood up I came out of my chair. Not only was the wind indicator to high for me. It was also to far out. I had to tie a line around my chest then the mast, so I could lean out far enough to reach this thing. I was REALLY regretting those words now. After some fighting with it I was able to get it off and send it down for reparis.

After 5 or so minutes it was hauled back up to me. Kinda good as new! So I bolted it back to its rightful place. I was then dropped like a useless stone all the way to the bottom of the boat. So ends the great mast story. The moral of the story is. Buy a shorter boat.

Here is the view I had at the top of the mast! I did my best to edit out the fear of heights for you guys!

 

My first post. Chain to rope splice.

My first post. Chain to rope splice.

by | Dec 27, 2013

Hello everybody! Ryan here, and today you will be reading my blog post. Recently, we noticed that our anchor only has 100 feet of chain. Which means we can only anchor in 20ft of water. (That's not very deep!) luckily one of my father's friend had 250 ft of anchor line at his disposal. So there we were, sitting around the table with our chain and the line. The gears in our heads were spinning faster and faster. We had to attach the line to the chain. Finally, it struck me like lightning as I stood up and shouted “We shall splice it!” (Everyone claps) Okay, it might not have gone quite like that. It was pretty close to the truth. Now it was up to me to attach this line to the anchor chain via splicing. I began reading the sailor books and watching videos on how to splice. Everysingle piece of information I found made it seem like a baby could do it. Let me tell you… This was a pain in the rear end. I'm not sure if it was the type of rope I had or just my general ignorance with following instruction. After 30 minutes of crying, frustration and sheer devotion I prevailed with the most beautiful splice you could possibly imagine. So the lesson of the day is. Buy a boat that has more than 100 feet of chain.