A hitch that will come in handy

[Joe11688]

It's been a while since I've posted anything of interest on this forum since I brought up my Gin Pole topic. With spring just around the corner I'm sure everyone is making plans on getting their boats ready or maybe a new modification is in the planning. Last year I made up my mind that I was going to try to improve my mast raising rig, particularly the temporary mast stabilizers, or baby stays. If I didn't have a CDI Roller Furler I would fore go the pivot bridles and the baby stays, but the furler adds extra weight to the mast that could possibly throw the mast off balance during mast raising/lowering process which I always do by myself. I've been confounded for a long time on how to connect my stabilizer stays to my mast without having to go through a lot of extra work. The MacGregor 26 that my friend Walter owned had a bolt through the mast that held two tangs for the baby stays connection which is OK but I'm not keen on drilling a hole through my mast because I have internal halyards. I could make some kind of a crotch or yoke out of wood that could fit on my mast. Said yoke could have two eye screws for attaching the temporary stays, plus a long bolt with a nut to tighten it up around my mast to hold it in place. My friend Wayne made up a rig such as this and it works great. I had designs on making one similar to his, and then it hit me. Why not use a length of rope around the mast in the form of a "Rolling Hitch"? One rope could do it, but two ropes would be better. The "Rolling hitch" that I'm going to show you is very different than the ones that are shown on the knot sites and most knot books, yet most power company lineman can tie this hitch and use it every day on the job. This hitch can be tied to wire, rope, Jib sheets, spars, and even a mast and it's ultra simple to tie. Take a length of 5/16" rope or braid line about 3.5 or 4' long and tie a Bowline at one end. You really don't need the bowline, but this is what I intend to use as an anchor point on my mast that will hold my baby stays, and it's easier for me to describe how to tie the hitch. Start by taking 5 or 6 clockwise wraps around the mast and while holding the turns in place, bring the rope down and under the bowline and back up over the wraps and tie two half hitches around the mast. That's it! You can grab that hitch and slide it up or down with your hands and put it anywhere you like but if you add tension to that bowline, that hitch won't move. In fact, that hitch would hold your weight without slipping. So with this anchor point on my mast I needed something to attach the baby stays to and I've decided to use a short piece of rope in the form of a noose that will go around the mast and connect to the bowline at the bottom of the "Rolling Hitch." I took some small pieces of clear hose and threaded it into the noose, along with two welded stainless steel rings which will be used to connect my baby stays from the two pivot bridles. Once I get the noose set up around my mast with the rings in between the hoses where I want them, I'll probably seize the rings to the noose. Any of you people who own O'Day 25s or 26s that have triangular plates on their stays for the boom bridle attachment, can probably add more stability for their masts by making up an extra set of bridles or baby stays and attaching them to the plates and the mast. I must admit to you that I haven't really tried this yet on my mast but I know that it will work. This is what I intend to use. One other important thing bares mentioning here. When you attach the rope from the noose to the bowline of the "Rolling Hitch", you should use a "Round Turn" and two "Half Hitches" so that you can untie it easier. Also, the "Rolling Hitch" can be slid down under load. So that's it! Please feel free to improve on it if you like and let us know what you came up with.
Ahoy!
Joe

 

[JoeWhite]

I use a similar idea. I use a dock line and make a loop arround the mast. Then I take two more dock lines and tie to this loop on either side of the mast to make "baby stays". Then I pull up the loop using the main halyard all the way until it reaches the bottom of the spreaders. The I fasten the main halyard. I tighten the two baby stays to either side of the mast to the foot rails. This keeps the mast swinging left and right as it is lowers or raised.

 

[Joe11688]

I use a similar idea. I use a dock line and make a loop arround the mast. Then I take two more dock lines and tie to this loop on either side of the mast to make "baby stays". Then I pull up the loop using the main halyard all the way until it reaches the bottom of the spreaders. The I fasten the main halyard. I tighten the two baby stays to either side of the mast to the foot rails. This keeps the mast swinging left and right as it is lowers or raised.

That's a pretty innovative way of doing it Joe! Some guy wrote an article in Small Craft Advisor last year on mast raising/lowering, and he used a similar idea to yours, only his idea involves putting a quick link in the mast track to connect the main halyard and baby stays to. I tried it out last year substituting a metal bale sail slide for the quick link, and it worked OK. I really wasn't satisfied with it though. It just seemed too time consuming. I wanted something that I could attach to the mast and not have to mess with the Main Halyard. Prior to using this guy's idea, I was attaching the baby stays to my lower stays with this Rolling Hitch at about reaching distance and this worked. The only problem with this is, you're tying the baby stays to your stays and you need to guess the tension of the baby stays. My original idea was to use two barb wire come alongs on my baby stays and make the stays equal lengths with snap hooks on the other ends. When I received the come alongs through the mail, I discovered that they were round grip and not flat grip come alongs that I thought they were. So I scrapped that idea. They're sitting down in my cellar right now gathering dust. As I noted before, Wayne uses a yoke that he built out of wood and metal that he hooks his baby stays to and pushes it up the mast within reaching distance, and tightens. It works great. I watched him pull his mast up with CDI Furler on his Seaward 22 at the dock all by himself, with a light wind coming from the beam of his boat. He used a small boat winch on his Gin Pole to do this and it blew me away. That's when I decided to buy a CDI Roller Furler for my boat. There was just no way that I could raise/lower a mast on my boat with a furler attached without a rig like his. The baby stays won't work too well on any boat unless the attachment points are in line with the pivot point of the mast Tabernacle. This is why I had to make up pivot bridles and install two pad eyes on my deck to accommodate them.

What I'd like to do Joe is have some people on the forum give this idea a shot and let me know what they think of it. Perhaps someone can come up with something a little different than the noose or hitch idea. If anyone has any questions about pivot bridles, baby stays, or even the Gin Pole, just fire away. I'm not an expert by any means, but I do have a firm grasp of what works mechanically on my boat whether I'm raising/lowering my mast or taking my boat on or off the trailer and putting it on boat stands. These things are not only just fascinating to me, but they're also fun to do.
Joe

 

[RECESS]

Just wanted to say this the kind of thread I have been wanting to find. I am tired of being the muscle to keep my mast from going side to side when raising and lowering. I plan on putting some miles on my trailer getting the boat to different sailing locations this summer.

JoeWhite,

Any chances of you having photos of your rig? It sounds straight forward enough, but man pictures sure are nice.

Joe,

The mast track piece sounds like way to keep it even more precise, when you tested it, did it bind running in the track?

 

[Joe11688]

Just wanted to say this the kind of thread I have been wanting to find. I am tired of being the muscle to keep my mast from going side to side when raising and lowering. I plan on putting some miles on my trailer getting the boat to different sailing locations this summer.

JoeWhite,

Any chances of you having photos of your rig? It sounds straight forward enough, but man pictures sure are nice.

Joe,

The mast track piece sounds like way to keep it even more precise, when you tested it, did it bind running in the track?

Dave,
The idea that I used last year worked OK. It didn't bind in the track because I used a regular sail slide with the small metal bail as opposed to the plastic sail slide. I didn't like his idea of using a quick link in my mast track. I really wouldn't use it on an O'Day 25 mast. I had mixed emotions on using it on my O'Day 222. I really think that his idea is more suitable for a smaller boat but I could be wrong about that. If you raise your mast from aft as I do, you're not going to like it. I'm curious Dave. Does your OD 25 have the triangular plates on the lower stays for the boom bridles and are you planning on using your boom for the Gin Pole in over the bow mast raising? Also do you have a roller furler? The baby stays really don't have to go all that high on the mast. The Mac 26 has them within reaching distance. Also, because of the fact that the Macs have flat level cabins, the baby stays attach to the roof of the cabin which is the same height as the Tabernacle. I really don't mind messing with my Jib halyard in the raising process because where I raise my mast from aft, the Jib halyard easier to work with because it's on top of the mast. If I raised my mast from the bow, the Main halyard would be easy to handle for that same reason. You really need to try it it both ways to decide which way that you want to do it and take it from there.
Joe

 

[Joe]

Looks like a Prusik knot... sometimes called a camel hitch. It has a slide and grip feature that you might find useful should you not own a set of ascenders.

http://www.animatedknots.com/prusik/index.php?LogoImage=LogoGrog.jpg&Website=www.animatedknots.com

 

[Joe11688]

Looks like a Prusik knot... sometimes called a camel hitch. It has a slide and grip feature that you might find useful should you not own a set of ascenders.

http://www.animatedknots.com/prusik/index.php?LogoImage=LogoGrog.jpg&Website=www.animatedknots.com

Yes it does look like a Prussic Knot but it isn't. This hitch is tied with a single line. I haven't found it on any of the knot sites Joe, but it may be in Ashley's Book of Knots. I'd have to go to the public library and check it out. That's one book I don't own and I wish I did. I tied it to a lolly column in my cellar with a large bowline close to the floor and stepped into it and it held my weight, all 200 lbs of it. The hitch didn't budge. If you were to tie this hitch to your mast within reaching distance, and then attach the noose with the baby stay hooked to it and the pivot bridles or triangular plates on your stays, and pull the slack up on your noose rope, The noose will tighten around the mast as the stays tighten up. We're not talking about a lot of strain here, but it's going to be enough to hold your mast from going over, within reason. The boat still needs to be level from side to side, and I would make sure that the wind is coming from aft if you're raising the mast from aft. If you look closely at the last picture in my reply to Dave, you'll see that I tied my baby stays to my lower stays with "Rolling Hitches" and I did this for a couple of years and it worked.
(Ask an O'Day Owner, mast raising OD 240)
http://forums.oday.sailboatowners.com/showthread.php?t=115483

These hitches never bent my stays or had any adverse affect on them, but I had to guess at the tension. As you know, if you have too much tension on one stay than the other, the mast is going to swing that way a little. I wish I could try this idea out right now but I guess I'll have to wait till the end of next month when I pull the tarp of my boat. We have a big snow storm coming tonight into tomorrow. If you decide to try it Joe, let me know how you make out.

 

[timebandit]

I just use soft ties and motorcycle tie downs.

The soft ties go around the mast above the cleats for the haylards and the tie downs can be adjusted to lower the mast into the cruch as the mast comes down.

The whole thing stores in less space than a 1/2 loaf of bread.

 

[Joe11688]

I just use soft ties and motorcycle tie downs.

The soft ties go around the mast above the cleats for the haylards and the tie downs can be adjusted to lower the mast into the cruch as the mast comes down.

The whole thing stores in less space than a 1/2 loaf of bread.

Whatever works for you, right? I've tried two different ways of guying my mast. Both ways have worked OK, but I'm always looking to cut down on the amount of time and work spent on setting it up. The Prussic Hitch around the mast would work, I think. I'll have to try it on a lolly column down my cellar when I get a chance. It looks like a faster hitch to use on this application. Generally, I use rolling hitches for securing the lines from tarps to my lifelines. I've also used it to secure a sheave up high on my back stay so I can hoist my sun shower bag. I've found many uses for that hitch.