Yesterday I spent the day working on Satori’s mast. I have been wondering where to mount a trysail, not realizing that the mast has two tracks facing aft (secondary is slightly offset, primary is where the mainsail goes). The secondary track does indeed exist so I’m ordering a trysail in the future for offshore severe weather preparation. Also it seems that Satori came with equipment to climb the mast using a long etrier. I’m familiar with ertiers in climbing and so it makes sense that this style of ladder is used for mast climbing. Essentially you have a rung for each foot and you can either grab the main center web or a rung for hand holds. I used a climbing harness and daisy chains with locking carabiners to anchor myself so I could hang from my harness to be hands-free. Another safety precaution that proved handy was to use a Petzl tibloc clipped to a second daisy chain that ran up and down an anchored halyard. This allows me to move up but if for any reason I fall the ascender will catch me. To go down I simply position the tibloc so it will run freely down the halyard. The only issue with the tibloc is that it is a little sticky for going down. The Petzl basic has a trigger that allows the ascender to move down much easier and would be better for those who want an easier solution.


I have been working with Kent Morrow of Northwest Rigging in Anacortes to assist me in self servicing the standing rigging in several stages. I removed the lower shrouds and dropped them by their shop to have replaced. To keep the exact same position of the lock nuts on the turnbuckle I simply marked the threads with a sharpie and then marked which shroud goes where with three indicators; port/starboard,front/rear and bottom. I’m a bit weary of replacing the fore and aft stays since I’ve never worked on sailboat rigging before. Hopefully it’s easier than I’m imagining and I can do the entire replacement on my own. The other item on the todo list was to clean the spreaders and remove the nasty looking fuzzy spreader anti-chafe things. There was a gob of tape wrapped around the clamps that hold the spreaders in place on the upper shrouds but I decided to remove it all and clean the spreaders. I will buy a pair of spreader boots to solve the chafe problem and install them when I replace the upper shrouds.


