Can Daddy touch the sky?

Our light at the top of the mast went out a few days ago.

This "anchor light" tells other boats at night that we are anchored. It's an important navigational tool, and is essential especially right now when we are anchored almost 100% of the time.

So... you ask, how does one fix the light at the top of our almost-60-foot mast?



Well, fortunately we have experience in this endeavor. We have had several projects over the past few years requiring Brian to go up the mast, including installation of a new radar and radar reflectors, as well as installing this very same anchor light 18 months ago. It is frustrating to have problems with this light already.

Here you can see the winch (large pulley) and halyard (rope normally used to raise a sail) that we use for this. I attach a winch handle to the winch which helps me turn it.




Brian gets in the "bosun's chair" and clips on the halyard. You can see the chair has pockets for his needed tools, and in this case, electrical supplies.




Then, I start to hoist him upwards. Madelyn watched intently this time. When Brian reached the top, she called up to him loudly and excitedly "Daddy, can you touch the sky???".

This is an interesting photo. It seems like one of those contests in the newspaper, asking for readers to send in captions. Why is this man's feet dangling in the air above his boat? Or maybe I was irritated with him and decided he should stay there for awhile... haha....okay I guess that isn't really that funny...sorry Brian.

On a more serious note, it does take a lot of trust in each other to make this work. Both of us are anxious when we have to do this, even in very calm wind and water. Sometimes, a boat zips by unaware of what we are doing, and the wake makes our boat rock back and forth. This is amplified at the top of the mast, where Brian has to stay calm and hold on. I don't know how he does it. He has nerves of steel. We have heard reports of people doing this at sea in a storm because of problems with their rigging. That is difficult to imagine.

I also have to stay calm when I'm focusing on his safety and I hear the girls crying down below. Whenever we need Brian to go up the mast, we always have the companionway closed completely so they cannot come up into the cockpit. I have to take deep breaths, and trust that they are fine until I get Brian down safely and can check on them later.

Brian took a self-portrait at the top of the mast!

He also took this great photo looking down on our boat! You can see our solar panels at the right of the photo. The companionway (where we take the stairs down into our boat) is just to the right of the mast.


Here is a photo he took at the top. You can see all of the other sailboats are either at anchor or moored.

After working on the light, we discovered that it is defective and is still under warranty. Since then, we have purchased a new light online and had it delivered to a local UPS store nearby. We had to do this again yesterday in stronger winds, and Brian successfully installed the new light.