Work Continues at Chicago Sailing

Here are a couple of shots of Donnie and Charlie working hard to sort out a skied halyard. This is a real pain to sort out and a timely reminder to all involved as to why it is very... very.... VERY important to never.... never.... NEVER let a halyard out of your hand unless it is secured to something.
What sometimes happens is that the weight of the halyard will pull the end of the halyard up to the top of the mast or even worse out of the mast altogether (with the help of those onboard) and either the mast has to be taken down or if we have to send someone up the mast to feed a wire down through the mast and then lead a new halyard through. Here you see that we have used the main halyard on our J30 Bonzai to haul Charlie up the mast in a 'Bosun's chair' and 'heeled' the J24 over towards the J30's mast so as to be able to reach the top of the J24's mast. This method saves us having to get a crane to take down the mast on the J24 and about an additional 2 ours work!!


This is a time consuming and sometimes very frustrating task (ask Charlie or Donnie) and can be avoided by sailors making sure to 'make off' or secure halyards at all times and also NEVER pulling a line or halyard that you are unsure where it is coming from.

All in all this took us about 2 hours from start to finish.