I need to tighten the Windex on my O day 25. What is the best way to do this? Pull the mast down or haul a small person up?
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I don't own an O'Day 25, but we have two of them at our club. I've actually had a person haul me up my O'Day 222 mast because I installed my windex backwards without thinking. My halyards are braid, so I didn't have any fear of them parting, but I noticed that the O'Day 25 halyards are a combination wire braid, and I don't know that I'd trust them to hold anyone. So if it was me, I'd either take the mast down, or find a high wharf to stand on to accomplish this task. It's better to be safe than sorry. Good luck.
When I first stepped the mast on my ODay 25, I forgot to be sure the upper shrouds were properly positioned at the end of the spreader so one side had slipped out of place and the retaining wire was bent in such a way that there was no way I could slip it into position. As my wife and I had a major struggle getting the mast up in the first place, the last thing I wanted was to lower it. So I checked the archives and there are lots of ideas for climbing masts. What I did was get a climbing harness at a sporting goods store, 50 feet of 10 mm climbing rope, 2 ascenders, 2 loops of webbing, and tied the climbing rope to the main halyard, pulled it up to the mast top, and then using the jib halyard as a safety line, I just climbed up with my feet in the webbing loops which were attached to the ascenders, took care of the shrouds, put the boots over the spreaders on both sides, and climbed back down. Much easier than I had thought. I did get a book on rock climbing, and that helped with knots, etc. Also found a post in the archives on mast climbing that helped. It worked for me. My wife didn't want anything to do with her being winched up in a bosun chair and there was no way she could have hauled me up. If you have the rope/wire halyards, another thought would be to tie the climbing rope to the end of the rope halyard, and then when you pull the climbing rope up, the rope halyard should be long enough so you could cleat that off and not use the wire end for this at all. Also Brion Toss's book, The Riggers apprentice covers climbing fairly well.I
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