On the surface, being a bosun is a matter of technical skill. You are expected to know all the knots, seizings, splices, etc., that might…
Letter to a Young Bosun
Posted in Rigging
Category: Rigging
Our New Rigger
Posted in Rigging
Hi, The days of large crews are in the past for me, but we still work on quite a few rigs, and we still work…
Falling, my e-book about life aloft is finally out, so it is time to share some of the kind words that other authors are saying about…
“Falling” Drops on the Seventh!
Posted in Rigging
Hello all, My new e-book, Falling, is about working aloft. It features true stories about bungy jumping, industrial rigging, parachuting, sailing vessels, and more, and you can…
Rig Survey Part 3: Surveying the Components Cracked swages, chafed rope, corroded fasteners, deformed shackles, these are the kinds of things that most people…
It is 1934. Wallace Carothers, a chemist for DuPont, is at work in his laboratory. He is lean, intense, bespectacled. All around him are beakers…
Rig Survey Part 1: Surveying the Design
Posted in Rigging, and Uncategorized
As surveyors, our work is based on the skills and knowledge of others, on lessons learned, often at great expense, given as a gift to…
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.”
To Engineer is Human
Posted in Rigging
All sailboat rigging is engineered, which is to say that, somewhere along the line, someone gave some thought to how much load was…
The Client From Hell
Posted in Rigging
Our clients tend to be wonderfully self-selecting; if they were the kind of jerks that we would rather not deal with, they probably wouldn’t…