For over 10 years I have been using ordinary rope-climbing gear to get up and down my mast single-handed. Picture attached shows my friend Trevor Robertson on my mast demonstrating how it works. Trevor, who is a lifelong blue water round-the-world sailor gifted me with this gear during one of his visits to Cape Breton after doing some refits to his boat at our place (before sailing to Greenland for the winter).
The climbing gear I use consists of:
- a climber’s harness plus a length of rope and a rope clutch
- another rope clutch, with two ropes each about the length of your leg, each with a slip-knot stirrup tied in to hold your feet securely.
(In the picture here, Trevor is using a prosik knot instead of a rope clutch for the stirrup lines.)
Standing atop front of cabin trunk, attach the rope clutch from harness to a halyard made fast, then attach the stirrup rope clutch below it. Slide the harness clutch up the halyard a bit and sit in it, raise your legs, slide up the stirrup clutch. Stand up in the stirrups, then slide up the now slack harness clutch. Repeat until you get to the elevation you want. The main effort here is in your legs, so your arms and shoulders are still in pretty good shape to handle pliers, cutters, screwdrivers etc. when you get to your worksite aloft. After a bit of practice this becomes very easy to use going up and down.
While there are a few mast-climbing products on the market from marine stores that give you the same basic functionality, you may get a better custom fit by shopping at an outdoor store to select the harness that is most comfortable for you, and clutches you are happy with (ease of operation under load being key). My guess is you’ll wind up with a better, more comfortable product at somewhat lower cost by shopping at a good outdoor store (e.g. like MEC in Canada).
A big advantage to this rig instead of using a prosik around the mast, is that you never need to adjust or remove it on your way up and down (ie for spreaders, radar domes, etc) and very little chance of damaging something like a lighting fixture, which is potential with the ‘round the mast’ connection.
From time to time my wife will go up the mast, in which case I can winch her up easier than she can winch me. In these cases, we both find using the harness is safer and better than the bosun’s chair.
I have two halyards installed, one external to the mast is a spare. I have used one to climb aloft to retrieve the other in the past.
Happy climbing!
Greg Silver
Misty Cat N26C #121
St. Peter’s, Cape Breton
