Up the Mast

This morning we left Williams Bay and motored in light winds 25 miles south to George Town. As George was walking back from the bow after finishing raising the anchor this morning he noticed a nut—as in nuts and bolts—on the deck. It wasn’t obvious where it had come from but he suspected it might have come from the radar—halfway up the mast. After finishing anchoring in George Town he went up the mast to inspect possible locations but wasn’t able to locate where it had come from. He did find a few other loose connections and used the opportunity to tighten them. While he was going up the mast the wind picked up creating more chop in the harbor, causing the boat to rock and the mast to sway. Any movement of the boat is amplified at the top of the mast. He decided to come back down before he was able to get all the way to the top of the mast. He will wait for better conditions before he goes up again. We have been trying to brainstorm where the nut might have come from if it didn’t come from somewhere on the mast. I suggested a bird might have picked it up and dropped it on our deck.  For some reason George didn’t like that idea. When we were racing our previous boat, we had heard stories of racers tossing a nut, bolt, or fastening pin onto a competitor’s boat to make them wonder where it came from on their boat. We never did this but the story is a good one. 

George uses a mast climber to go up the mast. It is similar to what tree climbers use. At that point he was just above the radar—it is the round thing that is visible under him.