Up the mast

Weather forecast was not too great today, but I'd had a phone call that the new radio antenna we'd ordered was in, so we went to Mersea to pick it up and hopefully install it before the rain started in the afternoon. While in Wyatt's for the antenna I bought a metre of thin elastic cord too, and my first task of the day was fitting a ring and a couple of hooks so the chopping board could be held in place behind the sink when not in use.

Meanwhile Julian put a temporary connector on the new antenna and called up the coastguard for a radio check. There was no point replacing the antenna if the problem was with the radio!

After that I could not put it off any more. I was heading up the mast again.

Julian and I do have this down to a fine art now, and with the proper bosun's chair it isn't scary, but I'm always reluctant to start. There was a fair amount of wind too, but nothing too bad and Robinetta felt steady on her mooring as Julian pulled me up on the jib halyard.

I could see a fair amount of damaged varnish on the way up. Looks like we'll need the mast out again this winter. 

I was going all the way up to the top of the mast, and the jib halyard doesn't go that high, so when I reached the end of that I changed the hauling rope to our "spare" halyard. This has no purchase to give mechanical advantage and Julian found it very hard work to get me up the final metre so I could reach the antenna mount. I helped all I could, hauling on my safety line, which is the top sail halyard (also without any extra mechanical advantage).

Once up there it was a simple job to take off the old antenna and put the new one in its place, but it took quite a while to come back down the mast, un-taping the old antenna lead and taping on the new one.

We had some lunch, then ran the cable the rest of the way to the radio and tested it. After that I got the sail cover off and Julian spent some time raising and lowering the gaff to find the best place to put the gaff span. It was coming on to rain, so after we marked the place we put all the covers back on and headed home.

It was a stiff row against the wind, but the tide was in our favour and we got back to the pontoon without problems.

This was the third time we'd used our Riber Bugzy wheels on Worm but the first two times we'd launched from the hard and only used the wheels to get Worm back to the car. This time we'd used them for both trips, and taken them to Robinetta with us. They don't take up much room in the dingy, and it was really quick to just lift the dingy on. We've got them properly fitted to Worm and tightened now, and we know where to strap them on for best position. They felt really good!