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.

So soft and fluffy, the anchor windlass found our new line a tasty morsel

On our second use of our newly acquired chain and rode, the line got caught in the windlass when Russ was bringing up the anchor. The line was never in the water even, but maybe that was the problem.  For the next few anchorings during our week’s trip, Russ babysat the process and had no further troubles.

Immediate research was in order; but wait, didn’t Russ already check with Lewmar and Defender before purchasing the chain and Buccaneer 8-plait line? Of course he did; switching from all chain (that rusty mess) to 90ft of chain with the 8-plait line sliced requires prudent research. What was missed in that vast sea of online info was a cautionary note to at least wet the line in either fresh or salt water before using. Salt water would seem preferred as that would cause stiffening of the line as the water dried.

Unfortunately this caution was not provided to us in any form when we ordered or picked up the chain/rode at Defender. Defender is top-notch about providing product info and this is one instance where they failed miserably; we let them know. A few emails back and forth with Defender customer service (kudos on responsiveness) led to a phone call with the high chief at Buccaneer. No, we hadn’t pulled the line through the windlass because our anchor was stuck; no, the gypsy didn’t have any burrs on her (we suspected it did, but close inspection showed none); and no, that part of the line never was wet.

Well, he went on to say, you could wrap electrical tape around it, but then again with just one strand mutilated the pull strength is only down 1,000 lbs.  Excuse me, this is our home not simply a boat we use once in a while. Thanks so much, good-bye.

Three choices remain: take the chain and line to Defender and they would cut off the first 10ft of line and re-splice; have Sound Rigging come out and re-splice; or, we do it ourselves. Can you guess the choice we made?  We did what any self-respecting cruiser would want/try to do; re-splice it ourselves. Oh the fun we will have :-). “Who is this we?”, asks Russ, knowing the one-person job will fall into his capable hands.

Weaving the strands back into the line

The splice is complete. The ends of the strands will get pulled in when the line gets used.