Lady Stardust (Baba 30' Sailing Cutter)

Recently I had to go to the top of the mast to replace the standard masthead tricolour/anchor light with a new LED variant from OGM. The new light is very small, very low power and should last longer than me. I also wanted to add a couple of halyards on blocks to the top of the mast and replace a bulb in the spreader lamps.  Sadly, the spreader lamps fell apart with rust when I tried to open them. New Spreader lamps were obtained from Tony at Steve Roberts Marine store at the marina. Tony is great, He generally has the stuff I need just after I need it, but very often he has just the ticket, at a good price too, most of all he's good for a chat when you need a break from boat work.

This was also the occasion to try out my new method of climbing the mast single handed. I had just purchased the TopClimber device, basically a bosun's chair with two clutches, one supporting the feet, the other the upper body. These clutches are fed onto a rope hoisted to the top of the mast , on the spinnaker halyard in my case, and winched taught below. Then you stand up and raise the upper clutch to face height, sit down, then raise the lower one higher, then stand up, raise the now chest height clutch to face height, sit down and raise the foot clutch. This way you move up the rope foot by foot. I was very pleased with this.

Many thanks to Mike who very patiently sat in the cockpit looking after the safety line for nearly three hours that I was aloft.

Here are some pictures from aloft:

The new spreader light	My Knee	My other knee
Liverpool's two Cathedrals	This boat looks quite small now
Those Solar Panels (250W) looked much bigger in my bedroom last month	Phil (Canny Lass) returns to his berth. Phil saved the day by milling out some fittings I had bought that fell the wrong side of the inch/metric match