.. to see what he could see. And in a similar way, I climbed the mast “to see what was at the top”. Last time it was dark I flicked the switch on the dashboard labelled “anchor light”, and didn’t see the expected white light from the top of the rig. Something was up. I’d forgotten to ask Jeff the surveyor to take some photos for me whilst he was up there back in April, so it was up to me to check it out.
I’d brought my climbing harness over but had forgotten any karabiners… I managed to scrounge together enough bits of tat and tape to sort out a decent enough prussik setup. I pulled a static line to the masthead with the main halyard and hauled myself up it. Turns out that there is an anchor light, so I gave it a wiggle to clean the connections. That sorted it. There’s also the VHF aerial (I don’t know if that’s working since the radio itself is kaput), there’s a stick that looks like it was part of a windex in its youth, and that’s it. There is a messenger line poking out (just!) so I can pull another wire up when I fit a tri-color masthead light. Later I found the bottom end of the same line poking out of the bottom of the mast inside, which is good.
Whilst we’re just cruising around the bay area, we’ll be fine with just the anchor light, but for longer offshore trips at night we’ll definitely want a masthead tricolor – one that you can see from a long way away regardless of the sea state. I’ll probably replace the anchor light with an LED tricolor + all-round white.
Road and Ocean 