Mast raising time

[CharlieJ]

Last Saturday, fortunately before the winds got crazy, W00dy and Ralay, with a good bit of help, got the mast back up on the Westsail 32 they are restoriing( and living aboard at the same time).

They had 11 folks on hand, including myself and Grime. All done without a crane :o That's Grime in the red shirt, last pic and in the third pic, Ralay (Rachel) stuffing wires through the deck, W00dy standing on the bow

A few pics

[Captain Smollett]

Congrats, guys!  Good job.

Reminds me of a few years ago, I "volunteered" to help a dude at the marina raise his mast.  A couple of us manhandled the mast up and while we were holding it up, he attempted to attach the new back stay.

Unfortunately, he had cut the back stay about two feet two short.

And then he wanted to stand there and ponder why it was too short..."How could this happen?" ... while we were holding the mast up.

Anyway, again...good job.  I'm looking forward to some cruising pictures.   ;)

[w00dy]

Thanks for the pictures, CJ. I was too preoccupied to think about it at the time, but I wish we had taken a few more.

All things considered, it went well. Organizing, preparing, and calling out a bunch of favors to get a crew together was the hard part. With all that in place, the raising went relatively easily. Nothing broken, no one hurt, no expensive cranes hired, and an excellent M/margarita dinner afterwards. Total success.

Luckily, no one got caught holding the mast up. There was one point where we were pretty close to having to backtrack and re do a bunch of difficult work, but sheer doggedness and a bunch of bodies to weight the bow down solved that problem!

As for the cruising pictures, well, give us a few weeks :)

[Jim_ME]

Congrats, also. It's great to see you bring that same self-sufficient Do-It-Yourself approach that is commonly seen on small boats to your larger boat.

One year, after the boatyard did not get to raising the mast as scheduled on my former 30-foot boat (and had left for the coming holiday weekend), and since I had made plans to use the boat, my friend and I decided to raise the mast ourselves. It was a Dutch designed and built boat, it had a tabernacle base. (I've seen photos of fixed bridges over the canals in Holland with fixed small manual cranes for boaters to use to lower and raise their masts).

Anyway, we did it while tied (tightly) alongside a dock at low tide. the tidal range there in Way Downeast Maine was about 22 feet so the boat was way down from the dock. I found a way to rig a lifting line from the masthead up through a post in the dock handrail and with my friend guiding me, pulled the mast up using my pickup driving ahead bit-by-bit along the dock.

So my friend, a fearless munchkin of a dude, was all by himself down on the boat, keeping all the standing rigging freed up and making sure that the pull angle (in the horizontal plane) was good, and giving me hand signals for when to creep ahead, stop, etc.

Still it was a bit anxiety-producing to pull up a heavyish 37-foot-long mast and to know that it has so much leverage on the tabernacle. Quite a difference from the mast of a 19-footer that you could handle and catch if anything went wrong. It was a great relief to have it up and to get down there and have two of us connect the head stay and tighten up the other stays.

I like the idea of having a bipod (same height as the boat's J dimension) that is attached to the upper shroud chainplate area and starts in a vertical position and where the apex that is connected to the lifting line rotates downwards to the tack fitting at the bow while the mast follows it through that 90 degrees to its vertical position. that way, all the lifting and struts and alignment is contained aboard the boat itself, so there is no issue with the boat moving and getting out of alignment from the pull that is from off the boat somewhere (like my pickup was).

I checked your blog and saw the photos of the painting and varnishing work that you've both done on the new cockpit/combing and other areas. I appreciate seeing your DIY/KISS work and creative ways to make the most of your restoration funds, and living aboard/cruising expenses--including on your previous boats. You are doing it on a bit bigger scale than some of the rest of us, but it seems like the same general process.

The group that you got together reminded me of the way that the Amish would get together and have a barn raising event. That's community.

[Jim_ME]

This is somewhat related, I think...as an example of something typically done with a smaller boat also being used on a much larger one [such as raising your own mast].  Am used to to seeing smaller boats (like Rhodes 19 Mariners, etc) kept in a dry dock/boat lift, but just saw my first Westsail 32 (in an ad in the New Orleans CL ) also in such a rig. That's some serious weight to lift...  :)

[edit to add: Also, if you raised/lowered the mast while the boat was in the lift cradle, that should hold the boat stationary during the operation.

[w00dy]

I found a way to rig a lifting line from the masthead up through a post in the dock handrail and with my friend guiding me, pulled the mast up using my pickup driving ahead bit-by-bit along the dock.

People have been lifting things up without cranes for a long, long time. I guess the good thing about using your truck is that you don't have to worry about it going on a stampede.  ;D

[Jim_ME]

I guess the good thing about using your truck is that you don't have to worry about it going on a stampede.  ;D

Ha! It was a 1988 Chevy S-10 with a 4 cylinder, so it's true that stampeding wasn't its strong suit...and would have been nice to have a good trunk...  ;)

The most difficult part was that although we could tie off the boat to the dock good and tight, the dock itself was floating and not very securely moored, so as I began to pull on the lifting line the boat and dock would move and the angle would change. It took some trial and error to figure out where to locate the line at a good angle for where the boat/dock were going to be under strain.

Again that is the advantage to having a bipod and all the lines contained on the boat, so that there is no line pulling on the mast from off the boat tending to move the boat around. With an all-aboard system, if the boat moves or rotates, the entire lifting system moves along with it.