This article should not be acted on without reading the entire series.
Last fall I wrote a series on going up the mast, inspired by Matt’s article on his industrial fall protection approach to the task.
My three articles were really the story of all the dangerous mistakes I had been making—in common with most cruisers, and even many recreational climbers—over some 50 years of climbing masts, and the changes and improvements Phyllis and I were making.
And even at the end of that process, after I climbed the mast for the last time in the 2022 season, I identified more areas for improvement, .
I then had the winter to improve the system and have just tested it out with my first climb of the 2023 season.
By the way, I’m a firm believer in going up the rig to check it over after stepping and initial tuning, but before sailing. This also allows us to leave the fragile things like instrument wands and wind indicators off while stepping.
So lets take a look at these improvements to last year’s system.
You need a proper fall arrest harness. The fall arrest point on a harness should be on the upper back.so that the shock load is distributed through as wide a area of the body as possible. You also need foot loops on the fall arrest harness. Otherwise, post fall, constriction of the femoral arteries could cause potentially fatal injury…. particularly if it takes some time to get you down.
Hi Andrew,
That’s certainly a good option but as far as I can see to make it work we need to be using Matt’s system: https://www.morganscloud.com/2022/11/02/going-up-the-mast-part-1/
And the problem with that is it requires at least two people on deck to tend the halliards.
The other issue is that placing the fall arrest point on my upper back would make it difficult to access the mast top without getting way above the arrest device and thereby increasing the fall factor a whole bunch.
And let’s not forget that climbers fall on, and hang in, the type of harness I’m wearing all the time.
A hip only harness is a bad idea for fall arrest. Climbers, with such a harness, will have a belay partner to ease the shock loads and immediately bring the climber to safety. You’ll find climbers using full harnesses when appropriate. I haven’t found the attachment point on the back a problem when using a FAD and the foot loops allow you to stand well above the top of the mast. And with a full harness it doesn’t matter if you fall a little bit from the top of the mast.
Hi Andrew,
If you are standing in the foot loops and attached at upper the back, as far as I can see, you are adding a lot of slack and a substantial fall factor so I hope you have at least a screamer in the system otherwise a fall will matter regardless of how good the harness is.
Note that like a climber I have shock absorption (screamer) and Phyllis can let me down very quickly using the backup halyard.
I’ve done industrial climbing. I’ve also spent more time rock and ice climbing than sailing, which is to say, quite a lot. I have fallen on a rope not dozen or hundreds of times, but thousands, and I’ve never broken a nail. Obviously, something is working. A couple of falls just last week, and though John has a few years on me, I’ve got some white hair. Over 40 years of climbing.
Fall with a back hook-up and you have a good chance of loosing teeth. Try it (don’t). Fall in a seat harness and nothing bad happens. You may have seen a climber with a full-body harness (aid climbing or a small child with no bones), but he was not using a back hook-up (not even the child).
Fall on a typical back hook-up harness and your femoral arteries will be compressed, making recovery to the ground urgent. If you are alone you will like have permanent circulation damamge. You have this backwards. A back hook up is more dangerous re. arteries because they are toward the front of the leg. I’ve done enough fall and hang time to very sure of this.
Fully body harnesses are mostly needed for fat people with no waist. That is not John. They also have some advantages in head-first falls–a trip on a scaffold–but that is not the case here. Climbers and arborists use seat harnesses.
Tower climbing (full body) harnesses do have front and side loops for positioning (work). Sometimes you climbing the long (many hundreds of feet) ladder sections using the back hook up, not because it is a safer fall, but because it keeps the tether out from under your feet. A front hook up is annoying when climbing a ladder. But no tower climber is going to fall on the ladder.
Do make certain the belt is tight enough that you can NOT push the chair down over your hips, no matter how you push. Personally I prefer modified claiming harnesses. The problems with seat harnesses in industry is they have to allow for sloppy fitting and out of shape users.
Foot loops. I always carry some slings and rope that could fashion these. Dedicated foot loops are not needed, only an understanding of the purpose.
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FTR, I do not use a screamer because the maximum fall distance is about 1-foot and I have polyester halyards. John’s system is different. I do not use an ascender for fall protection, I use a dedicated fall protection device that tracks up and down the rope, similar in function to John’s.
Drew, you will be probably be able to answer this one which has me a bit confused….
I was recently shopping for a climbing harness to make going up the mast safer and easier, inspired largely by John’s excellent articles.
I ended up going with a petzl body harness for one main reason; petzl say that the Ventral attachment point by your navel, on a sit harness, shouldn’t be used for fall arrest. Only attachment points marked with an A should be used for fall arrest. The body harness has a sternal attachment point (chest level) marked A specifically for fall arrest. It also has a dorsal attachment point marked A which I’m not intending to use.
There are obviously a lot of people climbing with sit harnesses and falling in them, why do petzl say you shouldn’t fall on the navel attachment point? Seems strange…
Hi Pete,
That’s interesting, and obviously concerning. Could you link us to where they say that? I’m interested in the context. Also, hopefully Drew will shed some light since, as far as I know, he’s the only person here with enough experience of both climbing and industrial fall arrest to be able to clarify this issue.
It looks like EN 361 points are for fall arrest and EN 358 are for work positioning and restraint. Perhaps others have 361 points at the waist, I have no idea.
I come from a climbing background and was pleased to see that my mast climbing kit closely resembles what you have landed on.
After watching some truly horrific mast climbing practices, particularly from captains sending others up the mast, I wanted a system where I was always in control. Here is what I do:
Going up, I tie off directly to the primary and that halyard goes to a winch for someone to help grind me up. I use a Petzl Micro Traxion as a progress capture on the backup. I also take a carabiner with me. The backup is secured (usually by a self-tailing winch and cleat). Everyone on the ground knows to not touch the backup under any circumstances. I’m winched up and do what I need to do. Upon lowering, the backup is transitioned from the Micro Traxion to a simple Munter hitch on the carabiner. The person below on the winch lowers me and I simultaneously lower myself. If the ground person were to slip on their beer can and let go, I wouldn’t lose an inch.
(For the transition I tie a quick figure eight below the Micro Traxion and clip it to my harness using the spare carabiner. Then I remove the Micro Traxion and pocket it, then tie the munter to the carabiner that the Micro Traxion was on. Finally, the figure eight gets removed.) This system adds some complexity but it keeps me in control, which makes me much more comfortable if I need to go up and don’t have a lot of history with the ground crew.
Hi Stephen,
Not sure I full understand this since I don’t know how a carabiner and munter hitch are used, but overall it sounds too complicated and prone to error for us non climbers.
Also I’m informed by a very experienced climber that ascending gear should not be used for fall arrest. Not sure if you are doing that, but for others see the red boxes on this article: https://www.morganscloud.com/2022/11/26/going-up-the-mast-part-3-our-system/
Hey John, thanks for your reply. I’m not sure if I got across my main concern so let me try to simplify because I do think it is an important one.
The point I was trying to make is that, for me, having a backup in place when coming down the mast is just as important as having a backup when going up and many times this is not given quite as much thought. In climbing the majority of incidents happen on the way down. When coming down, unclipping a progress capture or fall arrest device and being lowered by the person on the ground removes the redundancy. (I may have missed it but didn’t see much talk about coming down)
Mentioning the munter hitch probably distracts from the point but to put it simply, the munter hitch is a simple technique for repelling a rope that only uses a carabiner. Disregarding the mechanics, it allows me to control my descent down the backup line. On the descent, if there was a mistake or equipment failure and the primary went slack, I still have the backup.
Hi Stephen,
My fall arrest device works both ways, up and down. It’s activated by acceleration. That’s why I changed to it. And the big benefit, particularly for non climbers, is that it’s fully automatic so no way to make a mistake when changing from accent to decent. It’s also an industry standard fall arrest device certified by safety authorities world wide for that usage.
Everything I have been told by very experienced climbers, (see the post I linked to above) says that fall arrest and repel/accent devices and techniques are very different and that the latter should never be used for the former. My adviser in this case has many first accents to his name and was part of putting up many big wall routes including being part of the group who first climbed El Capitan back in the day. Drew Frye, probably the most experienced climber commenting here also uses the same type of device, although a different version: https://worknrescue.ca/product/camp-safety-goblin/
You will find a complete account of how I evolved from a very dangerous system using an accent device for fall prevention to my current system in the preceding posts starting here: https://www.morganscloud.com/category/rigging-sails/going-up-the-mast/
The key point in the process was that mast climbing got a lot safer for me when I went from “I have this cracked” to “I wonder what I’m doing wrong here”. That said, as I say in the article above, I’m striving to mindfully stay in the latter mind set, but in this case I have, I think, done enough research to be fairly sure that the fall arrest device is right, at least for me.
Got it. I had missed that your device traveled freely and was acceleration activated. That explains are few other parts of the system that I didn’t quite grasp and makes for quite a nice setup. It certainly simplifies my method. Thanks for your detailed responses and comments.
You asked about adding a third carabinerbetween the safety line and the screamer, rather than just passing the line through the webbing.
That is not a problem at all – rope-on-rope or webbing-on-webbing or webbing-on-rope connections are made all the time in climbing practices without problem (eg. the tie in point on harnesses; or the use of soft-shackles in all sorts of very high load points on boat). The only time you would not want to do this is if there is going to be movement at that point (i.e. leading a running line through a webbing loop instead of using a block or carabiner is going to lead to failure from friction pretty fast.) But, in your application, there is no movement when tying a bowline thru a webbing loop.
The only reason climbers wouldn’t do tie directly into a webbing loop instead of using a carabiner is for convenience – it is quicker. In fact, adding a carabiner is making the system weaker since the carabiner has a lower breaking strength and more failure modes than a strong knot on a bar-tacked webbing loop (however, both are WAY stronger than needed so it doesn’t matter much). Lots of load testing of this issue in the middle of this video and tons more on this very knowledgeable Youtuber’s channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkNP5AMh5HU
Hi Michael,
That makes sense and corresponds to what we have learned over the years in the sailing world. Thanks very much.
John,
So if I understand correctly, you have moved your Absorber device to be between your secondary halyard and the safety line, and it is hauled up all the way to the top of the mast. Is that correct? In that setup, does the absorber really functions the same way as when it was attached between the ASAP device and you? Will it open/stretch when it needs to do it?
Second question – the red safety line can just hang loose, right? No need to make it tight.
Best regards,
Maciek
Hi Maciek,
Yes, you have the set up right. And no, I can see no reason that the screamer would operate differently other than it might not extend with the new setup if I fell lower down on the mast because of the stretch in the red rope but that’s a good thing, not a problem, as I explain in the article. Point being it does not matter where I get the shock absorption as long as it’s provided, so if the screamer does not extend that just means I got enough from the rope.
Note that this setup is specifically approved by Petzel for use with the ASAP fall arrest device.
As to the red line, it’s better to keep that relatively tight and not as slack as I had it in the photo, otherwise one could take up the slack when going up and thereby increase the fall distance. Even though this is static, not dynamic rope, it has quite a lot of stretch and so can be quite tight without restricting movement too much.
What a great discussion. It seems you are being winched up. That has the disadvantage you mention that the ascending line has to move and so you have the concern about failure of the turning block. Using an ascender I can go up faster than someone winching me and with less effort and I can secure the halyard at the foot of the mast.
It adds cost and complexity but works well for me.
While it would let me ascend with no help I think it would be a bad idea to have no backup person keeping an eye on things.
I use a descender to come down but like the idea of the Munster hitch as a backup plan.
Stan
Hi Stan,
This keeps coming up over and over again, but we have reliable information suggesting that using hitches for fall arrest backup is not a good idea. And using ascenders is fraught with issues too, particularly if you are not a fully trained and experienced climber. I suggest you read the rest of the series from the beginning since there is a lot of good information there that may make you reconsider your system, as it did me, mine.
https://www.morganscloud.com/category/rigging-sails/going-up-the-mast/