The Danger in Getting High
One thing that has stuck with me from my U.S. Army airborne training at Ft. Benning, GA back in June 1995 is the danger in developing a false sense of confidence over a healthy fear. My fear of heights caused me to check and double check every point of my parachute harness for chaff or failing stitches. I approached every jump with caution, knowing that it could be my last if I overlooked something awry that could cause a fatality. As a professional parachute rigger, I knew that the detail I missed could land me in court and leave a family without a father, mother, sister, brother, son or daughter. I took my job very seriously and never had a parachute fail as a result.
Repairing marine electronics puts me in a similar liability, as the failure of a system such as radio, GPS or radar at a crucial moment could put the captain in danger, or at least inconvenience, as few sailors leave the dock without backups along with the tried and true chart navigation methods. The greatest danger that I find myself in would likely be that of climbing a mast. As in skydiving, mast climbing follows my jump master’s saying that “it’s not the fall that kills you but the sudden stop!”
Each time that I go up and down a mast without incident, I get more and more confident that nothing could happen. Conventional wisdom says otherwise. This is why I prefer to ascend with not one but two lines, with one person on a winch and another tailing the safety line. I also tie off on the mast if I’m going to be camping out up there.
I recently had the honor of replacing a wind transducer for Cheryl and Bob Ray aboard their Valiant 42 “New Passage.” They are the proud parents of Richard Ray, the developer of the MacENC program, which I happen to use on my MacBook to test GPS serial connectivity. I had the opportunity to snap some photos while my mentor, Lester Forbes, ran some tests at the base of the mast.
Forty feet up is certainly no place to throw caution to the wind. What says you?
