Our son is the only one in the family who has ascended to the mast top more than once and while there performed hands-free operations.  Not that his extended visit didn’t result in a bit of queasiness; all that ever-so-slight motion while working on the wires close up provided just a tad of sea sickness. A quick rebound though and we all felt better.

Arrrr too many wires! You want me to do what up there??

Our mast light which provides the required white at-anchor light and the tri-color light when sailing at night, had crapped out some time in December; we think. Gee, so no sailing at night. Darn. But no anchoring; well that could be a problem. We used our dinghy stern light which is white and hung it from a lazy jack as high as Russ could reach from then on every night we anchored; which was most every night.

Fast forward to last Friday night when Jon on Big Blue told us that if the light was a Lopolight (it was) then luck was on our side. The company offered a generous warranty replacement policy- yippee. Today, Wed, we received the replacement light in the mail. Damn if that isn’t great service.  Now who do you suppose will install the new light? Wrong.  Not Benj. 

A diagram that did not coincide with the equipment made for an extra-long stay at the mast top.  Our Eartec headsets saved the day and allowed Benj and Russ to talk it through when the plan fell apart once Benj found little similarity between reality and diagram.

I’d better not get rocked by too many boats; I’ve got a tough job up here- gulp-at 63 ft

Tomorrow morning we head over to the service dock where some lucky marina worker will get a view from atop our mast. And we get to plug in and get water easily. Life is good.