On the right track

We’ve added a Tides Marine Strong Track to the mast.  The low friction cars that are being built on to our new mainsail should allow for much easier hoisting, reefing, and dousing.  Our sail maker said it was the best thing since self-tailing winches.  I guess we’ll see.

Basically, the new track just slides into the old track.

I hoisted Nicole up a few times, first to clean the old track and then to give it a light lubrication.  She’s a pretty good little mast monkey and is pretty comfortable with working aloft.  Which kind of surprised me, since I copied the commercially available mast climbing setups by getting a used caving harness and line ascenders off eBay. 

The track ships in a big box.  This is as sharp a bend as it can take, so we had to remove the boom in order to install.

The existing track feeder also had to be enlarged to accept the new track.  I’m not sure what people did before the Dremel tool was invented!

Ready for the new main!  Should be ready in October.