Unbeknownst to both of them, during the decision-making process, the whaleboat was winding up six hundred feet of half-inch nylon line with it propeller. My buddy finally figured it out when a big inflatable boat appeared, coming rapidly up from astern… at first he thought this thing was just coming to see how things were going when, in fact, it wanted to dive under the stern of the whaleboat, explode, and wrap all up in the wheel in a knot as hard as a truck tire. He and the preacher spent a long time trying to cut the damn thing loose, but they were frustrated by the coldness of the water, the roughness of the fabric of the top-notch dinghy, and by a five horse British Seagull outboard motor that was also wrapped around the wheel and shaft of the whaleboat.
Brion Toss Yacht Riggers Posts
Hello all, First I would like to congratulate everybody who wrote in with an answer. It takes courage to risk being wrong, which it turns…
This is where it helps to have been a test pilot. As time slowed to the proverbial crawl, Rose looked over at her hand, and said to herself, “Brion told me I have to let go.”
Recirculating Purchase
Posted in Puzzle
In the picture above, our friend Alison is pulling on the fall of a purchase. She is also pulling on me, and I am the…
Last week I told of a near-fall while aloft on a big square-rigger. This week’s story takes place some years later, aboard a contemporary sailboat. I…
Name That Detune, Answers and Winners
Posted in Puzzle
Last week’s rigging puzzle, was about a puzzled rigger. Here’s an abbreviated version of the scenario: On a boat with shrouds that attach to deck…
Entries for the Name That Detune puzzle need to be in by noon Pacific Time, Monday the 28th. Send yours to Puzzle, and qualify to win a Fabulous…
Rigging sometimes means climbing, and climbing sometimes means falling. For all of my professional life, not a year has gone by that I haven’t heard…
Puzzle: Name That Detune
Posted in Puzzle
A client recently called for a consultation on tuning. He has a 30-something-foot contemporary sloop, double-spreaders, with all the shrouds even with the mast (athwartships).…
Many years ago Peter Bates, the most talented rigger I’d ever known, burnt himself out working in our loft, literally exhausted himself into a hospital…