Roosevelt Roads
Puerto Rico
18.14.018N
65.37.582W

This morning the weather looked good, so we decided to climb to the top of the mast again. Dale had rigged another type of weight that would fit into the allotted spaced and found a spool of a heavier gauge of line (about the size of a clothes line, if you remember those) to use as a leader line. I donned the appropriate gear and up I went. I’m not sure if I mentioned this before, but part of the gear that we use is a set of headphones. It keeps the shouting to a minimum and the communication much more clear.

At first, everything went according to plan. The weight and line fitted where it needed to go and dropped without incident. Sort of. Then, just like the last time, it appeared to be dropping but not getting anywhere. This time we decided that we were going to pull it back out, measure it, then drop it again to see if we were being impatient or if it was hanging up someplace. Except that it when I started to pull it back out, suddenly it seemed to fall and Dale was able to see it and retrieve it out of the exit hole it needed to come out of. Great!! We’re cooking with gas now; the slight hang up was forgotten. He cut off the weight at his end and started pulling so that I could attach the rope that was going to be our new halyard at my end on top.

He had given me two types of tape to use to connect the two lines. One was blue masking tape the other was duck tape, just in case. Piss poor planning on my part, I overlapped about 20” of the two pieces of rope and started connecting them together without taking into consideration the fact that I was near the end of the blue masking tape. Sure enough, about half way from the end of my 20” overlap-line-tape splice, I ran out. That’s why I had duck tape, right? Have you ever tried to use duck tape at 65’ in the air?

Now mind you, I’ve got a great perch on the world that high up. I’m sandwiched among 2 lengths of standing rigging holding the mast upright on either side. The foresail roller furling cable leads forward to the bow and the topping lift to the boom leads aft to the back of the boat. I’ve been hoisted up to a point in the midst of all of these points and I’ve secured myself to the top with a safety tether that leads around the mast, over the top and back to me. I’m not going anywhere and I can work with both hands. However, I needed 2 hands to keep the tape straight, another 2 to hold the lines together and still another to use the miniature knife scissors I’d brought , since ripping it with my teeth produced unreliable results.

The first 12” section I unrolled, immediately stuck to itself before I even had a chance to cut it. The next two 6 and 9” sections had at least waited until I cut them to plaster themselves together. I was developing a rather impressive list of salty sailor phrases when Dale used his doctor voice trying to convince me to relax and not get frustrated; we had all the time in the world to finish our project. Remember the headsets; clear communication without shouting. I smiled; the shoe was on the other foot today.

Then I had the brilliant idea that I would cut a little 3” piece to connect the end of my splice together and send it down since most of my splice was already taped. That accomplished, I gave the signal and Dale started tugging, I fed the splice through the rollers on top and down it went. Sort of.

We’d fed quite a bit through when it seemed to hang up again. We came up with a system of you tug, then I’ll tug, to try to force it through. Sometimes it would clear and continue down, but at one point, it just jammed in tight. Using my body weight to try and force it back the way it had come, it finally cleared so I pulled it back up and saw what I was afraid might have happened, the section of splice not taped had doubled up on itself and formed a bow between the two pieces of splice that were taped. I was able to dig the splice out of the top of the mast and using the ace bandage approach to taping, I secured a small section of duck tape around the splice then with a couple of inches at a time, would unroll it and wrap it around the splice. It wasn’t pretty but it wasn’t going to slide up either. Back down it went.

This time when it jammed, no amount of tugging, body weight or salty sailor phrases at either end of the line would clear it. Now what?

I asked Dale if he was up for some exercise and after securing the remaining rope at the top of the mast, asked him to lower me down to the various inspection points on the mast. The rope had cleared the first point I had come to on the mast but at the second one I couldn’t tell. So I asked for additional implements of destruction; a small flashlight and a wire hanger. By way of the dangling rope, Dale sent up my requests and the biggest screwdriver I had ever seen. I used all three in fishing out what appeared to be our leader line with a huge ‘nest’ of string attached to it. Do you remember our original attempt in St. Thomas at running the halyard using a spool of string I had sent down the mast? We had wondered where all of that string had gone. Well now we know. Once I was able to clear the nest out of the tiny hole, I went about cutting it off our leader line and was finally able to fish our rope out to that point. However, whether I liked it or not, there were about 10 pieces of string I couldn’t clear out. Since there was no reasonable choice left for me, I pulled them out as much as I could, then cut them. Back up to the top I went. Dale was definitely getting his workout for the day.

This time the line moved when we pulled on it and we were able to finish leading the halyard the remaining distance to the bottom of the mast. Sort of. Now when we ran into a hang up, the nest was found at Dale’s end of the line. The other 10 lines and about twice the nest I had found came out at his end. He had just as much fun, cleaning the nest off his end as I had at mine before finally being able to lead the rope out. He was dutifully impressed with my ‘wrap’ job. I reminded him that we had put a lot of tension on that wrap job and it held through the entire ordeal. We secured the halyard on deck and once again, Dale lowered me down the length of the mast.

The only thing left to do was hoist up the jib up on the foresail roller furling and roll it in. Thankfully, this was accomplished without a hitch. Sort of. Once we had secured everything, Dale noticed that the new halyard we had just run was pinched between the halyard for the jib and the top portion of the roller furling. At the top of the mast, of course. That meant dropping the jib again to clear the line and then running the jib back up. We figured that we’d save that for tomorrow.

We took a break and while sitting in the cockpit wondered where the original weight and leader wire that it was attached to went? We still haven’t found it. I surmised that at the worst possible moment, probably in a raging storm, we’ll figure it out and where it went and we won’t like it a bit.