Hal-yard-lujah!!

I thought I’d take a step back from my typical captious tendencies, and give Rich the praise he rightly deserves.  Last summer someone (and I’m not naming names) lost our main halyard to the top of the mast.  Over the past seven months or so we’ve periodically given thought to retrieving it.  Our boat came with a bosun chair, but neither of us has been brave enough to try it.  One of our neighbors has a mast climber and we briefly entertained borrowing it, but out of apathy or sheer laziness we never did.  So our halyard has remained trapped at the top of the mast.  For most sailboats this would have been a big deal.  The main halyard is what you attach to the mainsail to raise it up.  Without it sailing is not impossible, but difficult.  For us losing the halyard hasn’t been anything more than an annoyance since we have been in no condition to sail since Rich took the helm off and put it in storage.  This morning Rich was surfing…I mean researching on the internet and came across a halyard retrieval device.  It sorta looked like a fishing lure for some deep sea monster, and for $29.95 it seemed like a bargain.  Rich looked at it for a few minutes and said “I have stuff in the workshop to make something like this.”  So this afternoon he sent me the following pictures while I was at work.

It’s ugly but it totally worked!  We now have our halyard secured to a pad eye on deck.  The former me would have said “if it was so easy, why didn’t you do it earlier?”  But instead I happily say “good job, Rich!”