Preparing for the Journey - Up the Stick to the Reflector

This has been quite a busy year for Frog Prints, which has left a number of projects until the last minute before our departure on our annual End-of-Summer journey. This year Laura and I will be out for 14 days, with Kit, Roy and Rob taking her for an extra 8 from Nanaimo, so everything needs to be ship shape.

I took the first two days of the vacation (while Laura was finishing up at work and taking her co-workers to a Mariners' game) to finish off five specific projects I had been planning for a while, and generally check everything over. First on the list were a bunch of projects aloft - re-fitting the radar reflector, replacing the masthead sheaves, and switching the anchor light for an LED one.

I tackled the upper projects in order of altitude, with the radar reflector coming first. Given the amount of commercial shipping around Puget Sound, we opted for a TriLens reflector - it's a little bit pricey, but should give the best reflections from all angles of anything that would fit on a 34-foot sailboat. It does have one downside though...

The TriLens is shaped like three softballs attached together in a Y. It mounts to an aluminum shelf-type bracket on the mast. The problem with the shape is that people seem to get things hooked behind it - the genoa leech, halyards, I don't know what all. It doesn't happen that often, but people don't always pay attention, and the tugging on the reflector tends to work its mounts loose. We've lost one reflector, and the mounting shelf has a big chunk ripped out of it.

TriLens also provides a hockey-puck-shaped mount that can be used to mount the reflector on a flat surface. My plan was to use the puck on the bottom side of the shelf to act as a backing plate for the reflector. So, I had mounted the puck to the new shelf, grabbed all the necessary tools, and headed up the stick.

The reflector has a threaded tube with threaded ends which goes through the center. The tube can be used to raise the reflector on a halyard (just thread it through the center), or the ends screw into the puck-like mount, or the end sticks through a hole on the shelf mount and an end cap clamps it in place. So, I got the caps off, and safely secured the reflector to a spare halyard while I got the new modified shelf out. With the puck as a backing plate, the reflector would need to be attached to the shelf before mounting the shelf to the mast since it now would be screwed into the plate. However, when I went to screw the reflector into the new mount, I discovered the threads are a somewhat unusual design which would only screw into the puck from one side (and not the side I had expected). So, everything goes down the stick while I figure out what's next.

Back on firm dock, try as I might, I couldn't get the reflector to thread into the backing plate. I finally gave up and mounted everything back the way it originally was (although with the new shelf that doesn't have a chunk missing). I think the solution is going to be adding a second shelf-style mount on the top of the reflector, and attaching an aluminium loop to the mount to keep things from getting behind the reflector. Oh well.

Time to go to the next level - the masthead....