Lifting with your Rigging

Sailboats can be viewed as delicate creations that glide across pressure differentials in the air and water. Following this logic, you would be inclined to fear using your spars and rigging for anything other than sailing.

This is where davit companies take over, offering you an easy way to create a crane arm on your yacht that will lift your dinghy and outboard motor.

If you want to hang your dinghy on the stern and you don't have over-extending spars, then yes, you will need davits. If you are willing to place these heavy objects on the deck where they would be within the reach of the spars, then no, you won't need davits.

Davits are merely miniature replicas of what you already have, a mast and boom. The mast provides the vertical fixation point while the boom offers the horizontal fixation point. Using the two of these in tandem will allow you to easily lift and position any object you want onto your deck.

To do this, the first thing you need to do is stop viewing your rigging as a setup for sails and instead view it as a crane. The halyard is your hoist and your boom is simply the lateral positioning.

To carry this out, all you need to do is run a line from your mast out to the end of the boom and back. You will tie a bowline around the halyard in the end of this line after it has returned from the end of the boom.

This line is your outhaul and will position the object you are lifting along the boom.

To raise an object, you simply need to attach your halyard to it and begin cranking on your halyard winch. The outhaul will position it on the boom, so it is best to start with the outhaul all the way at the end of the boom, that way gravity will aid you in bringing it closer to the mast.

You can lift the object as high as the boom, and the boom can be lifted by way of the topping lift, giving you great flexibility in how you will manage your cargo. Once the object is clear of the lifelines by lifting it with the halyard, you can begin to ease the outhaul to bring it closer to the mast. When it is in the position that you desire, simply swing the boom over and it will bring the cargo with it.

Once it is over the area of interest, you can ease the halyard to lower it onto your deck.

Using this method, you can easily and safely remove and reinstall your inboard engine, as well as launch and retrieve your dinghy if you keep it under the boom behind the mast.

I keep a special line with a large thimble spliced into the end for the outhaul. The thimble reduces the friction and chafe between the outhaul and halyard, increasing their longevity. If this is a one time thing though, fire away with a bowline and get the job done!

Gantline Setup

Climbing the mast usually involves conning one of your friends to haul your heavy body up the spar so you can take a look at a few things. If you run out of friends who are willing to spend their day grinding on a winch, you will need to find a way up to the top and back to the deck in a safe manner alone.

One of the easiest and safest ways to climb the mast alone is to use a gantline. A gantline is a dedicated line that will raise a human up the mast. It is simple to rig and easy to use.

The gantline is made up of a pulley which is attached to a halyard. This pulley will be a double block. On your chair, you will have another block; double if you want to create a 4:1 system, or single if you want to create a 3:1 system. Between these two pulleys will run the gantline, which you will pull to raise yourself up the mast.

Some things to consider when choosing your system is how strong are you and how much do you weigh.

If you choose a 4:1 system, your weight will be divided by 4, but you will have to pull 4 times the height of your mast in rope to get yourself all the way to the top. If you weigh 200 pounds, and your mast is 50 feet tall, you will have to pull a weight of 50 pounds 200 feet. The weight is slight, but the distance is great and you will need a lot of endurance to make it all the way to the top.

If you choose a 3:1 system, your weight will be divided by 3, but you will only have to pull 3 times the height of your mast in rope to get yourself to the top. If you weight 200 pounds and your mast is 50 feet tall, you will have to pull a weight of 67 pounds 150 feet. The weight is slightly more, but the distance is vastly less. If you are strong enough, I highly recommend going with a smaller system, as you will get to the top faster and you will need less rope to do so.

The gantline is run through the blocks and tied off to the last block after all the pulleys are used. If you are using a 4:1 system, the knot will be on the top block. If you are using a 3:1 system, the knot will be on the bottom block. To go up, all you need to do is pull on the tail and you will slowly begin to ascend.

Coming down is easy too, as you let the line out, you will slowly descend. The friction from the pulleys will also cause you to come down a bit slower as well. If you loose your grip on the tail and begin to freefall, all you need to do is grab the mass of line that runs between the blocks and squeeze. The rope will stop moving and you will come to a stop without hitting the deck.

I like to use 3 strand nylon rope for my gantline because it is easy to grab and also easy to inspect the condition. Double braid rope can have a nice looking cover and a rotten core hiding below, waiting to fail while you are aloft. 3 lay is the entire rope, and what you see is what you have. If you notice severe chafe, you can easily identify it and repair it with a mending splice, or replace the entire rope if you do not feel comfortable with the idea of repairing rope.

Gantlines are a great method to raise yourself up the mast in a controlled and safe manner. They reduce the weigh involved which means that you can pull yourself and your tool bag up to the top of the mast with ease and peace of mind.

Bolt Orientation

When through bolting hardware, you might not pay much attention to which direction the bolt is facing. This may seem like a very mundane point to ponder, but this small detail can have a significant effect on the outcome of your project.

You may feel inclined to simply insert the bolt from which ever side you are standing on, but the truth is there is a right and wrong way to position a bolt.

To begin, lets look at a standard bolt. You have the head, smooth shank, and threaded portion. The head allows you to grasp the bolt with tools such as wrenches and sockets. The smooth shank is often overlooked, as it merely connects the head to the threads. The threaded portion is where the opposing nut attaches to give a bolt its fastening abilities.

The truth is, the smooth shank that is often ignored is actually the designed load bearing area of the bolt. This region of the bolt bears the most bulk and thus strength of the bolt. The threaded portion is actually significantly thinner as the threads are cut in, making the thickness of material reduced by the depth of the threads.

If you through bolt a high sheer stress object with the nut facing the most load, you risk sheering off the nut and causing a catastrophic failure to whatever you were trying to retain. The head should face the high strain working areas, as the head is right next to the smooth shank and thus is the strongest side of the bolt.

In the example below, a bracket was through bolted to the mast that will act as the attachment for all the turning blocks. Under full load, this bracket will be subjected to the full fury of the reef lines and main halyard. Since the halyard is located on one side of the bracket, that side will also be bequeathed with the heads of the bolts. The other side which will be under slightly less load will contain all of the acorn nuts used to hold the bolts in place.

Next time you go to through bolt a piece of equipment, be mindful of which end will be subjected to the most strain and place the heads of the bolts accordingly.

How to Tell if the Shrouds are Tight Enough

Adjusting the standing rigging may seem straight forward, simply tighten the stays until the mast is in column and in the correct order that way everything lines up and works well together. The problem is, how tight is tight enough?

You don't want to over tighten the stays because the additional stress is just that, additional stress. This stress is transmitted to the spar, the mast tanks, the chainplates, the hull, pretty much everything that is involved with the rigging will now be subjected to unnecessary additional stress.

There are two ways to check the tightness of the rigging, one is at the dock, the second is while sailing.

The dockside check is rather simple, all you need to do is feel how tight the cap shrouds are. They should be tight enough that when you push or pull on them, they don't want to jiggle around too much. If they feel loose or floppy, you need to tighten them further. 

Once the cap shrouds are set, the rest of the shrouds simply follow in sequential order with none of them being tighter than the cap shrouds.

The second method, and the preferred method, is to sail test the rigging. This will subject the yacht to the real loads that it is expected to perform under. If the mast is not in column while sailing, the windward shrouds are too loose and need to be tensioned further. If the mast is in column but the leeward shrouds are floppy, the leeward shrouds need to be tightened to remove the slack.

Eventually, rigging perfection will be reached where the shrouds are the perfect tightness. The mast remains in column on all points of sail and the shrouds never go dangling slack. 

The reason really slack leeward shrouds are a hazard are all due to the practical effects they can have on the rigging. 

If the cap shroud were to slip out of the spreader tip, it would then be too loose and the spreader would no longer be working. The mast would bend violently to leeward as the overlong cap shroud is over stressed. This is why the spreader tip needs to be tied to the cap shroud, that way it won't fall out of place, even when slack.

The second reason really slack shrouds are a danger is made apparent during tacking and especially during jibing. The slack rigging is under no tension while on the leeward side. Should your yacht undergo an accidental jibe, the leeward shrouds would quickly become the windward shrouds in a violent display of force.

The slack shrouds will be shock loaded, and these shock loads can be tremendously greater than what the stay is able to withstand. An accidental jibe could actually snap a stay, which results in overloading the remaining stays and potentially bringing down the mast.

If the leeward shrouds are kept in slight tension, they will not go from slack to fully loaded in an instant and the rigging will have a better chance of surviving a fierce accidental jibe. 

Climbing the Mast: Questionable Halyard Splice

When you climb the mast, your entire life is hanging by a single rope: the halyard. If there is any failure in the halyard, you will fall. This will result in either serious injury or death! It is wise to only climb a mast on a halyard that you think can support your weight. If you have any questions about the halyards ability to support your weight, don't use it!

The halyard on this yacht was in good condition but the splice was a bit questionable. If you attach your gantline to the shackle, always verify that the splice is in proper condition. You can't see inside the eye splice, but you can feel inside. Feeling the eye splice will let you note any discrepancies in the core and cover. W

When feeling this eye splice, the core seemed to disappear right as it entered the eye. It felt like if the eye splice was performed by cutting the core and only burying the cover. There is no way I would trust my life to such a cheap shortcut!

The rest of the halyard seemed to be in good enough condition and of sufficient strength to hold my weight, so I simply tied the halyard to the top block of my gantline. I couldn't fit the shackle through the slot on the block, so instead I tied a bowline in a bight. The end with the shackle simply hangs and dangles aside while the knot securely connects the block to the halyard.

If you don't feel safe with a piece of equipment, don't rest your life on it! Find a way to only support your life by the components that you feel are strong enough to bet your life that they will hold well. If you can not assemble a safe method to raise yourself up the mast with the reliable components, do not climb the mast! 

I personally climb my own mast using the shackle because I did the splice and buried plenty of tail into the splice. On other peoples masts, I typically tie a knot onto the top block of the gantline because their splices look weak or inadequate. If you have a weak splice on your own yacht, do consider replacing the splice (or halyard entirely) with one that is strong enough to support your life.