A question fo rthe classic sailors

[Guest]

I was watching the video on the home page of the Westward Cup - how do they keep the topmast in place or are they permanently mounted?

[Guest]

at the top of the standing mast) you'll see an area where the spreaders arecalled the doubling""topmasts slide through this area and are held with a heel fid, some were hoisted with a heel rope run through a well rebated lead in the squared topmast heel so they could be struck quickly, did hear a story that before trafalgar Victory struck their top hamper in something like 15 mins to prepare for battle whereas to do so today for maintenance etc takes up to 3 days ( effing OSH no doubt), topmasts were stayed independent of other rigging generally 1 forward ( for the flying jib) and 2 aft set up with tackle much like runners of today

[Guest]

And then a halyard at the top of the standing mast?

[rigger 47]

see attached pic - it shows the heel of the fore topmast and you can see the trestle trees (running for and aft) and the cross trees (athwartships).

 

To get the fore topmast out we had to drop the 3 yards first and progressively strip the standing rigging off as we lowered the topmast.

As it was the first time we had done it for awhile we took our time but basically got it all off /down in one day from memory, just remember that this rig was not designed nor rigged to be dropped / lowered at sshort notice where as the Victory was originally setup that way and had the crew to work it.

 

One issue we had was that the topmast was too long to be dropped completely thru so we had to take the fwd cross tree off - yes bolts seized so out came the wood saw

 

You can see the reason we took it down if you look carefully.

[Guest]

3 yards

It's called a 'meter' in theses metric days

 

You can see the reason we took it down if you look carefully.

The blind Greenpeace dude who mistakenly thought he'd chained himself to a giant Kauri?

 

 

Bugger being crew on the Victory, they had to be shorter than 4ft or couldn't stand up straight. Must have been pure hell to live and fight in those things.

 

Imagine doing a crash gybe. Actually when you think about it, those dudes way back in that day must have been the original Match Racers. The only difference being it all happened in slow motion and the losers died, probably quite horribly as well. But I bet that would get far better TV ratings than the boring crap that happens today. A new marketing angle for the AC maybe. "Who came second?", "The crew in that row of coffins".

[rigger 47]

Bugger being crew on the Victory, they had to be shorter than 4ft or couldn't stand up straight. Must have been pure hell to live and fight in those things.

 

Imagine doing a crash gybe. Actually when you think about it, those dudes way back in that day must have been the original Match Racers. The only difference being it all happened in slow motion and the losers died, probably quite horribly as well. But I bet that would get far better TV ratings than the boring crap that happens today. A new marketing angle for the AC maybe. "Who came second?", "The crew in that row of coffins".

 

FYI it is often easier and safer to wear ship (gybe) than to tack when it came to vessels like Victory, they could just brail in the sails of concern and set them again and the wind aft on the squares helped to brace them as the vessel was wear around to the new course.

 

Spoke with a gentleman that had served on the Pamir and in nearly 2 years onboard he told me they only tacked once as it required far more effort and took longer than wearing ship and the reason he told me that they tacked was to see how it was done.