Isaac Gilmore Fiddles

    A question of "how do you... ?" becomes a task for Google, these days.   In addition to spending  many hours on the internet searching and asking advice of forums, I asked folks at the yacht club what their opinion was.
    What I wanted to know was, how to access the mast tip-top after it was stepped the first time in the year?  It seems that no matter how diligent I think I am, I  always seem to forget  to mount or adjust something  way up there before I step the mast.  The first year, I just did without the tiptop fly.  The second year, I  rigged a boatswain's sling out of some line at  hand and nursed rope burns of a different color for the rest of the year.  By the 3d year, I had read about these  wonder lusts that beached their boat and "careened" it to access the bottom for maintenance.  I began to think that I might be able to careen it at the dock and access the top.  The lake I sail is land locked and no tide to use to beach her.  Since I had no experience doing this sort of thing, I started asking questions.  I wanted to have some idea of what was going to go wrong.  I certainly got some idea.  Some said the keel ballast would exert enough righting force to prevent me from tipping the boat, or at least to break the mast.  Some said the boat would try to scoot away from the dock and I'd have to secure her fast to the dock.  Some said that I'd better watch for the center of heel because once I past that, over she'd go and swamp. Some said, next time, I should make a list and check it twice, if more than twice was needed then I shouldn't go on the water with any kind of watercraft.  Several reported that they had careened on the beach or careened a boat stranded on a sand bar in low water.  No one reported experience careening from the dock.   And on, and on... .
    Needless to say, but I will, I forgot to put a spreader boot on and secure the port upper shroud to the spreader.  I didn't have to access the tiptop, but it was farther up than I wanted to shimmy.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.  So, on an overcast day, the only day off to do this for the foreseeable future, I decided to address my problem.  I would use the main sheet and the main halyard and tie it off as far as I could.  There was about 40' from the end of my cross pier to the other. 





I secured the boat with spare lines here and there to prevent it from slipping away from the dock, as was opined it would.  Did I mention that my day off was a Wednesday or something, I was alone and I had to act as cranker of the main sheet and lookout for the unexpected?
    I cranked for a bit and an uneasy feeling came over me.  I stopped and looked up, "Well, thats reassuring." I said to myself.  It was obvious that the boat was starting to roll toward me.  Then I decided to take a closer look.  I didn't need to tie off the boat to prevent her slipping away, I needed every bumper I had to prevent her from crawling under the dock.  The force the keel applied was to right her.  She was trying to maneuver herself under the mast.  As the mast moved toward me/the dock, so did the boat.  No one predicted this.  Once the boat was protected from the dock, I proceeded.  The next issue was to roll her over to the point of not quite swamping her.  Once I had her as far as I wanted to go, I still couldn't reach the spreader.  I could if I had a ladder.  So success, sort of.





    As I righted her, disassembled the rigging and prepared all the necessary standing and running rigging, I found another "oops".  The spinnaker halyard was not up there in the sheave where it belonged.  Well, from the success of the careening, I knew I did not need to careen her again.  I would not be able to reach the spinnaker sheave fully careened at the dock.  I hadn't taken the ladder back yet so I rigged the main halyard to the  top of the ladder and hauled her up so that I could shimmy up the mast to reach the ladder and using the ladder, climb high enough to reach the sheave.  It worked and fortunately, no pictures of this survived.
    One thing is assured.  Not that I won't forget something in the future, but now I know how and Pearson Ensign will careen at the dock.