WHEN THE HALYARD SKIES OFFSHORE…WHAT DO YOU DO?
On every passage there are sail changes and shifts that go smoothly or even better than expected…and then there are the surprises.ย Some surprises are more or less demanding than others.ย Our most recent surprise underway gave Captain Mike the opportunity to go up the mast in the middle of the ocean under clear blue skies over gentle 2 meter seas.
His thought was, “I’d rather see what it’s like now under these conditions in case I have to consider going up the mast in anything else.”ย ย
Here’s what happened:
Last week, we sailed from the Marquesas to the Tuamotus.ย Conditions were excellent; we decided to go dead downwind and fly our Main and Jib wing and wing.ย We poled out the jib, adjusted our course, set the main, and put a preventer on it.ย The boat felt rock solid sliding down waves and sailing at 9-10 knots.
The wind slacked, we shook out the reef and sailed for maybe 5 more minutes before we heard a “floosh”ย sound and SURPRISE our mainsail lay a limp pile on the boom.
After minimal discussion, Mike went up the mast to retrieve the halyard.ย He used his ascenders on one of our spinnaker halyards and we backed it up with our second headsail halyard.ย At the second spreaders we swapped and he was raised the rest of the way on the headsail halyard and the spinnaker halyard was his backup.ย Now with all these halyards, where is the backup main halyard?ย THAT and a backup mizzen halyard are now on our list.ย Had we had a backup main halyard we could have waited to ascend the mast on anchor instead of underway.ย Hindsight is indeed 20:20!
Once down with the skied halyard, we found that the shackle had opened, the main twisted out, and bent the shackle arms open.ย We fixed that, reattached the halyard to the sail, raised the main.
Mike’s Take-away:
“It was about what I expected.ย The hardest thing was staying on the mast.ย I would definitely not want to go up in anything more than that without more in place to make it easier…like maybe some mast steps or a better climbing set-up.”
SVย WHIRLWIND Mike, Maurisa, Russell, & Josea –ย Alajuela 48
