Lowering the Mast

On a fine Monday morning a small crowd of enthusiastic punters tipped up to the South of Perth Yacht Club intent to prepare Bellissimo, our smallest yacht, for its upcoming trip down to Henderson. Short on experience but high on determination the seven erstwhile characters gathered to plan then execute something not yet down by any - lowering the mast.

Skipper Reece had “read an article or two and watched a clip” the day before so took charge - with trepidation.

We opted to use an A-Frame on the bow, utilising two spinnaker poles. The poles were secured to the deck via rings near the shrouds. The forward ends of the poles were secured to a ring. This ring acted as our lowering plate. We then secured two halyards (using bowlines) to the ring. We then attached a 6-1 block to the deck next to the forestay and ran a rope through it, secured to the bottom of the ring at one end. The other end of the rope went back to the cockpit via the jib sheet car.

The intent is for the halyards and the added block with rope take the tension of the mast and allows you to undo the forestay at deck level. We didn’t realise the forces at play here so had to really tighten the halyards and block to introduce enough slack to the forestay.

Once done, and after realising that there was a baby stay that needed to be taken off as well 🤦‍♂️, we were able to lower the mast back to rest on a cradle placed at stern. Sounds simple but there was a lot of huffing and puffing going on.

Once successfully lowered we realised that the boom related blocks (vang, outhaul and reefing lines) were all trapped under the mast. Well, actually we realised after hearing the gel coat crack….

To prevent this for the next time we opted to remove the boom and main in its entirety and stow that below. It was a sleeker yacht by the time we re-raised the mast!

Lessons? Go slow. We took it slowly, kept redundancy in the rig and stopped whenever there was concern. It was a great idea to practice today rather than in front of an amused crowd at the Left Bank before going under the Freo Bridge.

Thank you to Peter, Kris, Bruce, Jon, Jye, Kevin and the author.