Mast climbing solo. Mainsail sliders. Rigging

I had to climb the mast again, this time only to spreaders: after tensioning the rig I needed to adjust positions of shroud lockers. When I bought Meritaten spreaders were just taped to shrouds to keep them in the same position. That’s asking for trouble: for shroud and spreaders to work properly the shroud needs to be fixed at the spreader end. Same principle as in hanging bridges. Ideally would be to use two wires instead of single shroud but then tensioning such a rig would be tricky.

I bought wire-stops at Benns. These are small clamps which sit on the shroud directly below and above the spreader’s end. With heavy load on the mast the shroud will be tensioned, giving strength to the mast. At some point the spreader may move which will change the angle between shrouds and the spreader resulting in catastrophical collapse of the whole truss. Wire-stops will prevent that.

To climb the mast alone I used proven technique of Prusik knots: one for bosun-chair attachement and the other as feet support.

This method works pretty well once one adjusts length of both loops so that it is possible to move the Prusik once it is offloaded. Otherwise it may jam against the other Prusik.

It took me a while to climb this way, with several jams forcing me to start over again. In the end I used short Prusiks with longer loops attached for feet support. Somehow it worked smoother than using a long loop directly for feet support Prusik. Mainsail halyard was used as a security line, folded against clamps on bosun chair.

Once this was done I moved to attaching mainsail hardware. Sliders on my new sail are made of stainless steel, contrary to old one where they were from nylon. The trick was that my mast track is of very old design so there are no sliders which can directly match. Maciej at Sailservice has found sliders made of stainless steel which almost match the track profile. Some modification was needed to fit them to the mast track.

It went quickly to modify these sliders: I opened their profile a bit.

Finally I could rise my brand new mainsail, insert battens and attach it to the boom. It is loose-foot sail that that was very straightforward.

Meritaten is now ready for sailing. Tomorrow I will provision her with fuel, food and water and we can sail to summer harbour on Saturday!