[Rhodes22-list] mast raising procedures

[Peter Thorn]

Slim and Bill,

Thanks for posting the mast procedures again.  Now that I've tried it a few times, it makes a lot more sense and the reading is certainly a little more interesting.  However I was surprised to read the part about connecting the *aft* lowers to the mast crane.

Raven doesn't seem to be set up that way.  On Raven, the forward lowers have fast-pins and all the other turnbuckles are fixed with ring-dings.  So, I connected the forward lowers to the crane and everything worked just fine - it's actually less work than you both describe.  The fast-pins speed the connection from the crane hoist to the chainplates a little bit too.  When I checked the rig tension with the Loos gauge everything was within specs, except the forward lowers needed a little tightening as one might expect.  

I know I'm pretty lucky that Mark and the other previous owners took such thought and care in setting up Raven quite nicely.  But I still wonder if I'm missing something:  why do the instructions call for connecting the *aft* lowers to the crane?  To paraphrase Rumsfeld "I don't know what I don't know".  Does it make a difference which lowers you use?

Thanks,

PT