Hello again from one of the "Lurkers" Way back when I was an Idiot enough to think I wanted to sail around the world, I fitted my Pearson "Vangard" with all the 'Offshore" gear recommended by the "Gurus". This included lazy Jacks, Jacklines, 6" wide 'railboards' U-bolted to the stanchions to prevent my b eing washed under the lifelines as well as handrails "Inside the cabin" at the galley and by the Companionway. Loneliness can be a person's worst enemy so I headed out Juan De Fuca Strait alone to the longitude of Kodiak then North to the Latitude of Dixon Entrance. This is not a calm area so I had the opportunity to use the Jacklines repeatedly. They ran from a heavy through bolted base on the Cockpit coaming above the canintop to the break in the cabin where I had enough 'tail' on my safety harness to reach the jib. This system worked, after a fashion but: It would have been helpful if they were largs enough and rigid enough to use as handholds while going forward in difficult conditions. No matter how ofter I tried to tighten then, they were still too loose and were making abrasion marks on the cabin top. They did the job but had enough problems to discourage their use which is the opposite of what is needed offshore. Later while delivering a 40 something foot British Catalac from Ft Lauderdale to Choctawatchee bay(sp) I was introduced to a much better system. This was a continuous 1" SS grabrail raised abobe the cabintop a few inches, well braced and supported every three feet. It looked like a sophisticated grabrail, and it was! There was a rail on each side of the cabin so two workers could each have their own system. on this rail slid a car that was substantial enough to encircle the rail all but the thickness of the supports so it went freely fron end to end. Built into the car was an eye for attaching the safety harness to and protruding a couple of inches at an upward angle of about 45 degrees. The eye was build on a cam system so that if pulled downward as would automatically happen if a person fell while attached, it locked in place firmly and would not moove until the padeye was raised back to its working angle. A crewman could clip onto this car with his safety harness and walk the length of the deck and the car would follow. When he arrived at the place he was going to work, he pressed the padeye down (Or up) and it was firmly locked in place until raised again. Beautiful system. My three novice Crew who had never been in the ocean before became quite adept at "locking on" in the seas we had in the Gulfstream with the wind against the current and in a brief storm in the gulf with winds to 50 kts and one crewman came to me and asked in all seriousness, "Are we going to die?". I didn't laugh, I responded seriously, "No, this is very uncomfortable but the boat is built to take this and survive and we will too as long as none goes overboard so, Always wear a PFD in the cockpit and clip on to something substantial BEFORE going outside. This seemed to calm them but afterwards they wanted to cruise the inland waterway instead of being out of sight of land? I learned a lot that night. What I considered an uncomfortable blow, They took as survival conditions! Ben Owen MV Meteora Lake Logan-Martin

Been meaning to write about Chinook's tether system for a

On Tue, 30 Jul 2002 11:21:46 -0500, Ben Owen <n7lbw@juno.com> wrote: >Later while delivering a 40 something foot British Catalac from Ft >Lauderdale to Choctawatchee bay(sp) I was introduced to a much better >system. This was a continuous 1" SS grabrail raised abobe the cabintop a >few inches, well braced and supported every three feet. It looked like a >sophisticated grabrail, and it was! There was a rail on each side of the >cabin so two workers could each have their own system. >on this rail slid a car that was substantial enough to encircle the rail >all but the thickness of the supports so it went freely fron end to end. >Built into the car was an eye for attaching the safety harness to and >protruding a couple of inches at an upward angle of about 45 degrees. Been meaning to write about Chinook's tether system for a while. Last summer I believe a boat yard in Seattle (Kvachick?) launched Chinook, a new boat for the Columbia River Bar Pilots. Since they are actually using helicopters to deliver the pilots most of the time now she hasn't been seeing much duty. Any way she is built for seriously rough water and is even self righting although a fire extinguisher broke out a pilot house window and she failed to right at the test I attended. Anyway she has a track around the entire pilot house and boarding area with sliding cars that are designed to be tie off points for harness tethers rather than using webbing or steel cable for jacklines. Since the tracks are at waist level the tethers can probably be shorter than the six feet that is common with deck level jack lines. A shorter tether should result in less of a shock on the sailor if they should fall. ___________________________________________________ Ross Fleming rossflem@serv.net S/V Renown Gulfstar 39 Seattle, Washington http://renoun.net