Climbing the Mast and the Spreader Sails and Rigging- Standing and Running Forums

spruce is the standard I think for the spreaders but we rebuilt ours a while back in teak because whatever the prior owners used on ours rotted out.The wood works and works well but aluminium would be less maintenance. The wood just looks nice though 🙂 The teak to make new spreaders cost almost 300 dollars 4 or 5 years ago. I think you could buy the aluminium replacements as cheap or cheaper.. Of course if you have a good source of wood then the price could be much cheaper. You could make them out of treated 6 or 8 x 2 treated pine. Just find a couple pieces without any knots or flaws. You would have to replace them sooner.. maybe every 5 or 10 years if you took care of them but it would only cost you 20 or 30 dollars in materials. We used the old spreaders as a template to make the new ones, table saw, jig saw, belt sander and palm sander were all we used. Table saw was nice but not necessary.. We used it and the jig saw for rough cutting out the shape and the belt sander with 36 grit paper to shape the spreaders to the marked lines. Then palm sander to put a smooth finish on it. Being it was teak we didn't paint or treat them for a year or two to let the oils in the surface wear off so that varnish would penetrate and bond. 🙂 so we totally forgot after a couple years that we hadn't done it yet and its been 5 years or so and still just untreated teak. Seems to be just fine anyways.. got to love teak.. Only downside is weight aloft.. We probably added 4 or 5 lbs aloft using teak over spruce.

Going up the mast is no different than any other sailboat. Someone hauls you up in a bosun chair or if you have mast steps you can use them 🙂 even with mast steps to the spreaders on our boat we still are tied off and some one belaying us for safety when we go up.

Obviously the more high quality the wood the stronger and longer lasting it will be. I have to say that I think a high grade of big box store wood, would be safe to use. When we replaced the old spreaders they had major rot and cracks as much as an inch across on top. I was freaked out they were so bad. The day before we had been out sailing in 25 knots of wind without reefing and just having a blast.. Still gives me the shivers. This was before she was mine, just to put my disclaimer in.. The next day I was taking pictures with my canon and a telephoto lens and for some reason decided to take pictures of the spreaders. From deck it just looked as if the paint was peeling on them. Took a high res photo at extreme telephoto and then put it on the computer and blew it up.. It showed some significant signs of cracking and discoloration that were small enough that you couldn't really see them from deck. That necessitated a trip up the mast and looking at the topside with major cracks and punky to the point you could dig it out with your fingers in places. To the best of our knowledge the spreaders were supposed to be only 2 years old at the point, having been replaced by someone we knew for the prior owners before Angela bought the boat who I in turn purchased it from. We were dubious about them only being two years old at that point.

My point being that those spreaders were incredibly weak and compromised but had stood up to some pretty decent wind and gusts to the point of being on the edge of over powered. Big box store wood is going to degrade faster than a good quality wood and not be as strong and I recommend good wood. However the cheap stuff will work and be safe up until the point it is cracking or rotting. The load on them is in column with the length of the spreader and the wood is most strong in compression like that. Now after saying that we replaced them with some pristine straight grain no knots teak. lol.. so maybe you don't want to do as I say but rather as I did 🙂 lol.

actually there is a forum topic on this already here that you can see pictures and commentary from some others also 🙂 Click Here

Right! thats what I was saying… those things were scary….. After being out the day before in 25knots and seeing those I needed to sit down and shake for a few minutes. It actually didn't look that bad till after I went up the mast and scraped off some of the paint that was starting to flake. Once the paint started to come off it was like "holy shit!!!!!". The pictures I posted reflect the paint scraped off. scary scary!!!!

Just to make sure ... It wasn't my boat back then 🙂 lol. After we got the boat I crawled all over it and started repairing a lot of stuff that needed it. I don't think anything else came even close to the seriousness of the spreaders though.. At least not in any safety way.

oh... no.. [Image Can Not Be Found] no need to pull the mast down. You just ease everything up a little so the mast doesn't bend weird or anything when we totally slacked the uppers. then we went up the mast and pulled the old spreaders off.  let them slide down the stay at the tip and disassembled that at the deck. Took the main halyard and spinnaker halyard and ran them port and starboard to give the mast side to side stability till we built the new spreaders.. Once they were built we assembled the tip around the uppers at the deck and then used the halyard to pull the tip up while walking the spreader up at the mast. Might have been easier to just take the spreader up and install it and then assemble the tip around the upper stay... six of one/ half dozen of the other kinda thing. After spreaders were bolted in we just tightened the uppers again. There seems to be minimal amount of up and down adjustment to the spreader tip the way it is designed. We pushed it up as far as we could to get as  close to the proper bisecting angle as we could. It didn't move far and as best I can tell it is endemic of these boats and the design. Since masts aren't falling over on a regular basis I guess it is adequate as designed [Image Can Not Be Found]

honestly there isn't much you need to pull the mast down for ever unless you just want to break it all appart and refurbish it and everything in and on it 100%. You can pull any give individual thing off it and replace it in place with no issues at all other than maybe the mast head fitting with the all the pulleys and stuff on it. If your going to do a lot then doing it on the ground would be easier by far and less time consuming. If you don't want to pay to have the mast pulled you can take the extra time it takes to go up and down the mast and the more difficult work conditions doing so.

Going up the mast is perfectly safe if you use the proper safety precautions. We use two lines and a safety belt as well as someone on deck belaying one of the lines at all times.

Most people don't use the second line like we do but we are pretty cautious. So I would be wearing a rock climbing harness and tie the main halyard with a bowline to the harnnes with enough tail to tie a second bowline around myself that is just slack unless the harness turned loose. This would be the main line that holds my weight and would be used to lift me up the mast with the main halyard winch. Then I would most of the time have a second halyard tied around me in another bowline that stays a little slack. It is a pain and someone on deck has to take up the slack or let out slack on the second line at the same time as the main line. Sometimes I do without this line but if your being anal it is a proper redundant safety feature. Third I have a safety belt or line on me that goes around the mast to hold me close to the mast and that when I get to the spreaders  or mast top is tied in so that it not only holds me close to the mast so I can't swing away from it but also once I get to where I am going will keep hold me up once I tie it in over the spreaders or to a fitting at the mast head. A person at the foot of the mast belaying is required 100% of the time while going up and down and they need to be someone you trust to stay focused and on task. Your life depends on them. They need to be able to smoothly and safely crank you up the mast and know how to slowly and smoothly let you down afterward with you both communicating back and forth to slow down/ speed up / stop etc..

On our boat we have a big self tailing winch that is used to crank up and down.. don't ever trust the self tailing feature when someone is on the line. Use it and manually tail it. Even better if you have two people at deck level, one cranking and one as a dedicated tail. Once you are up and in position the line is around the winch and you lock tail down on a cleat or with a line clutch. You should have at least 3 or 4 wraps on the winch. When lowering someone you are probably going to have to go to two wraps on the winch to get it to smoothly slip to let them down. If you can do so with more wraps then use more wraps. Remember if you are using two halyards with one as a redundant safety then you need to give it slack at the same time with a second person or you need to give it a few feet of slack and then let the main one out the same amount and then more slack on the redundant one and then back to the main one. Always keep tension on your main halyard you are using and don't let it go slack at all ever while lowering someone. Just the secondary one.

I'm sure that others can throw in some tips that can help also. Most people use some kind of chair to go up and down the mast in.. anything from a fancy expensive  one with  convenient pockets to just a board you sit on with lines run to each corner and under it. I have used them and they are even more comfortable than a climbing harness but to be honest I like the safety of the climbing harness. I could be turned upside down and thrown around and will not come out of a climbing harness.  Not to mention that I can go online to one of the rock climbing shops and purchase a harness much cheaper than a bosun's chair from west marine or other chandelier.

You are right.. the first time going up the mast you will forget stuff and or be real slow and uncertain about going up and down etc.. It would be "not good" to try doing so the first time while under way on the ocean or away from the dock. that introduces a huge amount of movement you have to deal with on top of the just normal going up and down and working on the mast once in place. I would want to have done it enough at the dock that both you and the person at the foot of the mast know your jobs without thinking about it. Even if you know how to do it that well still always think about every step up and down.  Just one of those things that is easily doable for you but you never ever get careless about it.