I caught this photo with my iPhone the other day as Jay was up the mast of S/V September Song installing a new wind transducer.  I get this view pretty often.

Of the two of us, he is the fearless one.  Never have I been up a mast, and I don’t plan on starting anytime soon.  Every time a mast job comes around, Jay jokes and says “I’ll let Brooke go up this time”.  Oh no, not happening!

Fortunately this job didn’t require him to hang up there too long – only about an hour.  I think the longest he’s ever dangled in the air has been between three and four hours at a time.  He always comes down and has to sit down for a while to let his legs gain feeling again!

The record for tallest mast climbed so far is about 63 feet above the boat’s deck.  I think we’d have to work someplace that has much larger vessels to ever beat that height!

I’ll leave you with a few more views:

View from the top of S/V Surprise

Radar work on S/V Angel of London

My customer had purchased this item new from Defender and called me to install it for his Lewmar Concept 1 anchor windlass Monday morning.   The wiring from the windlass to the display was straight forward and typical.  Getting the counter to actually count was more of a challenge.  The manual, which I believe was presented in a 2007 edition, was very thorough in diagramming the wiring connection…up to the point where the sensor was mounted.

Defender acknowledged that they have received calls about this item before and recommended calling Lewmar.  Now, certainly Lewmar has fielded some tech support calls on this lack of a very important detail.  I called on January 18th myself and have yet to receive a response.  No bother.  The owner and I jumped to some conclusions and got it working with little fuss.  The image below shows decent detail, having been captured by my wife’s iPhone in a pinch, of a plywood bracket used to suspend the sensor about 1/4″ below the windlass gearbox, while a small magnet was placed in the revolving keyway.

Installed a Raymarine X30 with a connection to integrate with Coastal Explorer navigation suite. All is well.