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Going up the mast of a sailboat for maintenance usually involves being hoisted in either a harness or bosun's chair using a halyard (rope that raises the sail). These ropes are very strong but they also sit outside exposed to sun and salt water for years at a time so anyone sane will want a second line
for safety. The problem is that going up on one line and keeping an ascender or Prusik on another becomes a cumbersome task that usually takes two people. It can also be a problem if your boat only has one halyard - what can you use as a safety line? A better solution is a small fall-arresting device that fits into the slot of the sail track. It would be a narrow slider with a spring-loaded arm on each side with rubber brakes. The arms could then be attached to a central cam which would force them out into the sides of the track when a load was applied. Using this, a solo climber or someone using a single rope could clip their harness onto the ascender and simply slide it up the mast as they climb. Falling would cause an immediate stop.
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I'm trying to picture the relationship between the spring-loading and the cam. If the arms are spring- loaded, does that mean you're actively pinching them together while you go up, so as to keep the brake pads off the side of the sail track? Or, if the spring is kept under pressure by a catch, how is the catch released when you need them to spring out? Manually? |
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pert, the key is the phrase: "when a load was applied". As long as there's no load, it slides up and down freely. It acts like a seatbelt. Pull gently and it goes. Pull hard and it stops. |
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The spring-loading is necessary to keep some tension on the arms against the sides of the track. Otherwise if you fell it would fall with you, and there wouldn't be any load to turn the cam. |
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//Falling would cause an immediate stop.// |
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Presumably there's a way to initiate a reasonable descent? Death by falling isn't necessarily a good way to go, but is at least quick. Dangling upside down 20ft off the deck for a few days doesn't appeal. Similar to how old sailors didn't learn to swim. |
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I'd never been on the ocean before I once spent a summer off Vancouver island on a 32 ft. floating prison they liked called a long-line trawler freezer boat. Other crews would head back to shore every night or two.
We were out there for Weeks at a time.
This one time we're in a storm that's supposed to last for a week and the long-line cable jumps the pulley at the far end of the outrigger. Captain and first mate are freaking out that it's going to take four days to drag gear back to shore, they won't let me get a word in edgewise and by the time they noticed that I was already halfway up the spar, they just held their breath because by the time I made it to the top I was describing like hundred foot arcs through the air, almost brushing my nose to the water and waiting for each successive lull in the arc to climb another tiny amount. |
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I put the line back on the pulley. I shimmied down. |
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They stopped talking over me after that. |
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Then there was this other time... |
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I've heard that story before and I love it ... Go ahead, tell us the other story too! |
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The draw works had pulled the screws out of the hull and our gear was hanging from the end of the outrigger. We tied a treble hook to a line and tried to snag it.
I was the newb so I go the last throw. (like an hour or so after both of them), I snagged it. We reeled it in.
I almost got my hand on the line when the hook lets go and all three of us were launched backwards into the checkers and the skipper was at the bottom of the pile and I have never felt as much joy as I felt watching that treble hook launch like five football-fields while accidentally suffocating my skipper and first mate until I watched it land. |
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I'm not proud of the fact that few things have made me as happy but it's true. The birth of my daughter made me happier, but not much else. |
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I laughed so hard. I was young but to this day I makes me grin thinking about it. |
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On a side note; They were going to throw overboard a shark they had killed which had a distended belly.
The belly I cut open was full of babies. |
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How many of you have seen infant sharks? |
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I kept them alive for weeks to study them and write on their bellies with indelible markers. |
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If you ever catch a blue-shark that has x's and o's or the word "scurvy" written on its belly... |
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True stories. They don't matter much but they're mine, and they're true. |
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Somewhere there are some sharks who know your scent and image, and feel bonded to you. Or would bite you at the first opportunity, you'll have to experiment to find out which. |
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When I was spearfishing a lot, the joke was when I got in the water at one of our usual spots, all the locals would go "oh no, its that guy again". |
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//It acts like a seatbelt// |
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So, would there be a rotating component, analogous to the spool of a seatbelt, which could be induced to lock into something when it rotated too fast? |
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