[Rhodes22-list] Checklist

[Bill Effros]

Slim,

I don't have time for this right now, but let's nail this issue.  Stan's instructions are wrong and dangerous in some instances.  Some of his instructions are for lowering the mast to the stern, and others are for lowering it to the bow.  If you happen to have the wrong set for the direction you are lowering toward, you and your rig can get hurt.

Checklists are the only way to do repetitive things on the boat.  Most of these procedures are performed when we are tired or rushed or both.  Elton can do them in his head.  We can't.

I have checklists for most procedures for my boat.  I still haven't nailed the procedures for raising and lowering the mast because I do it so infrequently.

Checklists "off the top of our heads" generally miss things that others don't catch.  When I have more time I will help.  For example, your number 5 is my number 1.  This is a critical, often missed, simple step that does a lot of damage if overlooked, so I put it first, in all caps, to ensure I won't miss it--this time around.

I hope you and others will develop a good checklist for this procedure, but if you don't, I'll bring it up again when I have more time to participate.

Bill Effros


----- Original Message ----- 
From: Steve Alm 
To: Rhodes 
Sent: Friday, April 16, 2004 5:31 AM
Subject: Re: [Rhodes22-list] IMF Furling Repair; Mainsail replacement;mast lowered and raised twice out on the lake yesterday


David,

Glad your rig is back up and running.  As for raising and lowering the mast,
it sounds like you could use a little checklist to refer to as you go.  Take
Stan's directions, paraphrase a bit and laminate it and keep it handy.  With
a little more practice, you'll get it down, but some of those little details
like disconnecting the pop top slider, or the radio and light connections
are easy to forget.  A checklist might be helpful.  Most important of all:
when raising or lowering the mast, make sure nobody is in the cockpit or
anywhere else where the mast could fall on them if something breaks.  Don't
be in a hurry.  Take your time, follow the checklist, be methodical and it's
easy as pie!

How about this--  Kind of off the top of my head--anybody chime in if I've
missed something:

LOWERING THE MAST:

1.  Disconnect the back stay tensioning line
2.  Disconnect the boom from the traveler
3.  Remove the traveler bar
4.  Hoist the boom up with the topping lift and cleat it off on the mast
5.  Disconnect the pop top slider and close the hatch
6.  Disconnect the radio and steaming light
7.  Wrap up jib sheets and jib reefing line
8.  Disconnect forward lower shrouds and add extensions
9.  Loosen all other shroud turnbuckles
10. Deploy and secure mast crutch
11. Deploy and secure hoist crane
12. Attach aft lower shrouds to crane
12a Alternate: Attach line from crane to mast bail if you're thus equipped
13. Tie hoist winch line to bow cleat with a bowline
14. Snug the hoist to slack the bow stay
15. Disconnect bow stay and drop clevis pin and cotter ring overboard  8-)
16. Crank the hoist "down" giving the mast a little shove to get it started
17. Check the shroud extensions as you lower to avoid entanglement.
18. Tend the jib as you lower
19. Lower the mast to the crutch
20. Crack open a cold beer

Do the reverse to raise the mast, but while raising, watch to see if any
shrouds get tangled on anything as it goes up.  REMEMBER:  Nobody in the
cockpit or anywhere else under the mast during these procedures.

I'm leaving out some important details, like when a passing power boat hits
you with its wake and your screwdriver rolls off the deck and falls in the
drink.  Or that same power boat passes just as you disconnect the boom from
the traveler and it swings around and whacks you in the noggin.  I'll leave
the trouble shooting up to you!

Note:  Some boats utilize a method of lowering the mast forward instead of
aft.  If that's the case with Arrowhead, then...um...ignore this.  8-)

Hope this helps.  

Slim
S/V Fandango

On 4/16/04 12:08 AM, "David Keyes" <dkeyes at houston.rr.com> wrote:

> Stan's mast-hoist system is great.  I am 64, worked single-handed
> yesterday--no one around to help.  I spent all day today taking down the mast
> (twice) at the dock, in howling winds, replacing the mainsail, and fixing the
> IMF.  No serious problems and nothing dropped overboard.
> 
> Last fall, my mainsail jammed in the out position for a week.  The sheet metal
> screw holding the upper bearing had backed out, jamming against the inside of
> the mast at the top.  I used cords to tie the sail against the mast while I
> was away for a week, but they came loose in windy weather, causing the sail to
> beat against the spreaders and sustain sail damage.  The slapping around also
> caused the screw to fall out, thus again permitting the sail to be furled back
> in and out.  After a few months of raising and lowering the boom slider/IMF
> tube, the upper bearing (now missing its set screw) came off the top of the
> tube and fell part way down the mast just inside the slot, preventing the sail
> from being unfurled past that point.  Time to fix everything and replace the
> sail--all with great help by email from Stan, as well as earlier helpful input
> from the R22 list.  I had never taken the mast down before, since my boat
> stays in the water full time and I don't own a trailor.  Based on advice from
> the R22 list, I decided to do the work without taking the boat out of the
> water.
> 
> Following Stan's advice, I removed the boom prior to lowering the mast--this
> removed some of the bulk from the IMF repair job that I had to do (which
> involved sliding the IMF tube out the bottom of the mast), although boom
> removal wasn't necessary.  The IMF upper bearing did have a hole, but no screw
> was in sight.  I drilled a new hole in the tube off to the side of the old
> one, and countersunk a 1-inch stainless #6 sheet metal screw.  I replaced the
> mainsail with the one that Stan sent me--the new style with the vertical
> battens.
> 
> All is working fine now, but I will need to replace the 4" carriage bolt at
> the mast step (the last half inch and the wing nut were stripped and sheared
> off).  Temporarily, the mast is sitting OK for the time being with no wing
> nut.  Also, I bent the spring pin in the pop-top block slider.  I tried to
> straighten it out, but it does't work as well as it should.  Stan will send me
> the bolt and a replacement pop-top slider pin which can be replaced on the
> next mast-lowering.  I made a not very important gouge in the pop top cover
> with the now-bent pin.  This happened because the second time I lowered the
> past I had forgotten to slide up the pop-top block (but the slider was
> detached from the pop top cover).
> 
> Brief diary of the day:  I worked at the dock, in about 20 feet of water.  I
> used the sailboat on the opposite side of the dock, to my bow, as a "table" to
> hold the IMF tube as it came out.  I was pleasantly surprised that the IMF
> tube is so rigid that I was able to carry it off the dock and up on the grass
> to work on it, without any excess bending.  The weather was bright sunshine,
> with low winds increasing to howling winds during the mast lowering and
> raising.  Drinking lots of water still left me six pounds lighter at the end
> of the day--194 down to 188.
> 
> I spent the morning carefully going through instructions and lowering the mast
> and removing the IMF tube.  In early afternoon I wasted 45 minutes looking for
> a 1-1/4" #6 sheet metal screw, but it turned out that the 1" I already had
> worked.  It is necessary to countersink the screw head into the bearing so
> that it does not bind inside the mast.  By 4 p.m., I had the mast back up, the
> IMF repaired, no damage or incidents, and everything perfect.  My 7/64 drill
> bit (used to drill the hole in the IMF tube for the self-tapping sheet metal
> screw) was too dull, and it took several attempted holes and lots of elbow
> grease.   Next time I will start out with a high-quality new drill bit for
> hard metal.   The only other glitch on my lowering of the mast had been to
> forget to unplug the radio and light plugs at the foot of the mast--the wires
> certainly got a tugging before I noticed it when the mast was almost all the
> way down.  Amazing that the wires didn't pull out of their plugs.
> 
> So, at 4 p.m. I had removed the mast hoist and was finished except to restore
> the boom and for trying the IMF.  The IMF was jammed.  I seemed to have lost
> an extra wrap that I needed and also the sail seemed wedged, with the new
> vertical battens taking extra space in the wrapped sail.  (Stan subsequently
> advised me not to retract the self-cover area, containing the battens.)  I was
> no longer confident that I had wrapped the sail and the IMF furling line
> correctly.  
> 
> So . . . from 4 to 6:30 I repeated the job except for the now-fixed bearing--I
> lowered the mast and removed the IMF tube again and took the tube and sail
> back up on the grass and started again.  I lowered the mast from memory and
> while tired--no instructions--a mistake since I forgot this time to slide the
> boom block and pop-top block to the high positions, so that I heard a crunch
> of the pop-top block into the pop-top cover.  I also seemed to have stripped
> some of the threads on the mast-step bolt, because the wing nut could not be
> removed, and I finally sheared off the end.
> 
> However, by 6:15, when I got back to where I had been at 4 p.m., everything
> worked.  I don't know if I had done anything wrong on the first IMF furling
> installation or not.  So I replaced the boom.  I had to pull and work
> carefully to get the sail out of the slot the first time, past the vertical
> battens, but then it expanded and retracted easily.
> 
> I noted that the luff line of the new sail, in the IMF tube slot, is about
> 1-1/2" longer than the old one.  I was going to drill new holes for the upper
> and lower brackets where the sail loops attach, so as to extend them to their
> full length.  But it was so difficult to drill the one hole for the IMF
> bearing that I did not do this.
> 
> Stan's mast-hoist instructions talk about walking the genoa back to the mast.
> By email he told me not to do this if it is a CDI or other third-party
> installation--I have the 175% genoa with the CDI furler.  I will remember next
> time the importance of sliding up the boom and pop-top blocks to their high
> set points; I had focused on the most important step of removing the pin
> connecting the pop-top cover to the mast.  I will also remember the obvious
> point, if one notices or thinks about it, that the electrical lines should be
> unplugged.
> 
> One safety point that almost caught me.  At one point I got my thumb up into
> the rope coil around the crane winch.  Not a good idea.  The beginnings of
> what in a split second more would have been torture chamber time prompted me
> to remove my thumb faster than the speed of light.  It didn't even hurt or
> cause a mark on my thumb--the story would have been different if I hadn't
> stopped winding and got my hand out of the way in the nick of time.  As Stan
> warns in his instructions, keep clear and realize that there are a lot of
> mechanical forces, and protect the boat by stoppiong instantly if anything is
> going wrong.  I found Stan's instructions very helpful to watch all the stays
> and keep everything clear and free from binding and be ready to stop
> immediately.  At one point a found a lower shroud caught between the edge of a
> porthole and the cabin--I saw this before ever starting to raise the mast.
> 
> Two times does not make me an expert, and obviously no where near the
> experience of those who trailer their boats.  But if anyone on the list thinks
> that my day of doing all this might have given me some useful experience
> relating to tasks that someone else on the list maybe hasn't done before, I
> will be glad to try to answer questions about how I did some of this work,
> what I thought was hard and what was easy, and what I might do differently
> next time.  Overall, the day was a success.
> 
> David Keyes
> S/V Arrowhead
> Lake Travis
> Austin, Texas
> __________________________________________________
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