Real rescue with 26X

[Neo]

Awesome job Herschel..... You can rescue me any day

"The devils in the detail" Dave .... Don't hold back my friend let's hear it or a Youtube vid would be good too .... might save a life one day

[yukonbob]

Our boats are already equipped with a hoisting system with the mast and boom. People use them all the time to hoist heavy gear onto the boat from the dock and even to lift inboard diesel engines out of the engine rooms for their larger boats.

Be careful doing this with mid boom sheeting. A person fully clothed and soaking wet fully supported off the main sheet (mid boom) would most likely fold the boom in half (We could be looking well in excess of 300 lbs point loaded in the middle of an unsupported boom) unless extra provisions are taken to move or add a topping lift in line with the main sheet bail. This is common practice when removing engines as mentioned above. Even someone 150 lbs clothed and wet could very well be approaching 200 lbs, This wouldn't be far off from end supporting your boom and standing in the middle of it

[Neo]

Hmmm .... good point yukon....If the boom breaks (at any point) it would most likely hit the person you are trying to haul up too
Having said that, with a top lift attached, I'd be surprised if breaks at 300lbs (136Kgs).

Also lifting off port or starboard, without ballast in the tank, will make her heel considerably and possibly topple in a high wind.

Who would like to test this out first?

[yukonbob]

Not that it's something to be seriously concerned about but with the fractional rig ie head stay below the topping lift; is the lateral load being applied to the top of the unsupported mast while doing heavy lifting with the topping lift or main halyard. Might be something to consider as well more so when swinging the boom out over the water. Would be best to use the jib halyard as a tl for this exercise, wrapped around the boom through the bail clipped back to itself...if it doesn't get hung up going around the mast. Even better with that scenario is then wrap the halyard around a winch to take the pressure off the boom almost completely.

[Neo]

Having seen how strong a Mast and Stays are my guess is it will take the load. But this is really a job (calculation) for Tom .... Go for it Tom

[Herschel]

Our boats are already equipped with a hoisting system with the mast and boom. People use them all the time to hoist heavy gear onto the boat from the dock and even to lift inboard diesel engines out of the engine rooms for their larger boats.

Be careful doing this with mid boom sheeting. A person fully clothed and soaking wet fully supported off the main sheet (mid boom) would most likely fold the boom in half (We could be looking well in excess of 300 lbs point loaded in the middle of an unsupported boom) unless extra provisions are taken to move or add a topping lift in line with the main sheet bail. This is common practice when removing engines as mentioned above. Even someone 150 lbs clothed and wet could very well be approaching 200 lbs, This wouldn't be far off from end supporting your boom and standing in the middle of it

This is why the idea of wrapping the incapacitated MOB into the unhanked mainsail while it is still attached all along the boom would alleviate this single point weight issue. The main challenge with the sail would be getting it over the lifelines amidships onto the top of the cabin deck, keeping the MOB reasonably level. But with 1/2 weight of MOB being supported by the foot of the mainsail all along the length of the boom, and the other half by the main halyard, surely Mac's in our size range should be able to handle that.

[yukonbob]

I keep a loop of webbing, if you turn it into a figure 8 and can get and arm through each loop, twist up the slack and get a carabiner or shackle at the front centured on the chest (used this as an improvised seated climbing harness a few times) slip your cleated aft dockline through the biner and wrap the other end around a cabin top winch and winch up to gunwhale level then hoist in from there. Works with big fish too

[Neo]

That sounds interesting...Any chance of a photo or two?

[Bilgemaster]

Don't bother with that Harbor Freight pulley hoist....the rope is 1/4" nylon....they're made for hoisting a baby bamby at most. Use your boom vang or main sheet in a pinch (I use my main halyard run aft to the winch). I keep about 100 feet of nylon tubular webbing on board at all times to make any number of slings for hoisting. Our boats are already equipped with a hoisting system with the mast and boom. People use them all the time to hoist heavy gear onto the boat from the dock and even to lift inboard diesel engines out of the engine rooms for their larger boats. I'm sure everyone has a slightly different setup on their Macs but I would encourage anyone to not only learn, but to practice recovering not only a heavy object, but a person from the water. Set up a sling that can easily be deployed and put on a person in the water and practice your hoisting skills....I can go into detail if you'd like.

JT

Details would be good. I'm aware of the fact that folks use their mainsheet or vang tackle with the boom to hoist this or that, though still being a bit of a noob, I'm a little foggy on the details. Guess I should really hit YouTube to see if there are any demos that might apply to a Mac 26X. The main reason I'm pondering that Harbor Freight Gambrel and Pulley Hoist is speed and convenience. My hunch is that I could get that thing retrieved, hung and deployed in a fraction of the time it might take me to unrig and re-rig the vang's or even mainsheet's gear.

I'm not sure of the average weight of the "baby bamby" you mention (whatever that may be--Google isn't much help, intimating that it could be either a washcloth or some character in a rather odd-sounding postmodernist gay Italian fairy tale), but Harbor Freight claims at least that their rig should handle up to 440 pounds. I agree that the rig's 1/4 in. polypropylene (not nylon) rope doesn't exactly look like the stuff you might want to do Mt. Everest with, but otherwise its hardware seemed sturdy enough in the shop when I first saw it...albeit only in its package. Of course, I was chiefly assessing it as a tool to more easily singlehandedly haul my little Intex Mariner 3 inflatable dingy aboard, and not as a piece of emergency equipment. Still, I think I'd rather have it aboard than not. It seems to me that with a line fed through a hollow, say 3 foot, section of "swim noodle" with bowline knots at either end to be slipped over that crossbar gambrel coathanger-looking thing, you might have yourself a rather quickly-deployed serviceable and reasonably comfortable and buoyant under-arm sling.



Still, I am curious to learn what folks with more experience than I might be doing.

[Tomfoolery]

Having seen how strong a Mast and Stays are my guess is it will take the load. But this is really a job (calculation) for Tom .... Go for it Tom

The MacGregor suppliers page shows a detailed drawing of the boom, but doesn't include section properties (moment of inertia, section modulus). So a thumbnail analysis of 300lb at the middle of the 10'-6" boom comes out to around 16,000 psi bending stress. 6063 aluminium has a yield strength of only around 20,000 psi, so impact loading (bouncing, shock loads, etc.) could fold it.

Maybe I'll model it on my work computer, if I'm feeling ambitious next week. It's a complicated section, and a custom extrusion, so I can't just look it up (Dwyer and others who make mast and boom extrusions). But it's dimensioned adequately, so I can model it and find properties.

But in general, whoever said loading it mid-span could be dangerous was quite right. Move the main sheet to where the topping lift terminates, or vice-versa. And use another line in place of the main sheet, to bring the boom in, as putting a load on the end will heel the boat and cause the boom to swing out more, not under control.

All said not from experience in plucking folks out of the water, so take it for what it's worth.

[Neo]

Great write-up ...Thanks Tom
Happy New Year to everyone

[Ixneigh]

Happy New year. May good health and fair winds be yours in 2017.
I had to lift a person with a life sling brand recovery system. The person went for a swim and could not climb the ladder to reboard my 33 foot yawl.
It was not easy. And the weather was good and I had help. The system itself worked ok. It just required a lot of winching strength. Note that on that boat I had a winch on the mast. It was all I could do to operate it.
The stock rigging on the macs are not strong enough to deal with the loads reliably in marginal or bad weather. If you lose some one off your boat in bad conditions and they are incapacitated you are really in a bind. In fact if its just a couple I don't see much way to recover a person in a life jacket without radically different thinking. My problem is how to get them attached to the boat. If its a together crew they had harnesses on. You still have to get a line on thier safety harness. Almost impossible in bad weather alone. You'll have all you can do to control the boat. If it happened right now, and I suddenly saw my crew member go overboard and slide a stern, I would jibe the boat as soon as I could (id probably be sailing so this assumes under sail in 25 plus winds) and drop the jib. Now the boats under deeply reefed main. Start the motor in case i need extra power to approach the person in the water and come up on the weather side and let the boat drift down on them so i could grab them with a boathook under thier harness or life jacket. Now i got the person. Boats going crazy main flogging its brains out, but she's heeled way over with me and my pulling up on the boathook. I'm going to have to some how get a line, a jibsheet end, mainsheet, something, on the victim. Without going over myself. That will be the hardest part. Asuming i can do that, now i have the victim attached to the boat. Ill Use the sheet winch if i can, to crank it in tight. But wont try to lift them. I might need another line from thier harness to a forward stauncion. Because now we are going sailing. If theres anything left of the main after flogging all this time, I'll sheet it in tight all the way and let it roll the boat way over. Now i can winch the MOB up snug again. Each time the boat rolls in a swell ill snug up. The persons head might well be level with the rubber edge strip on the hull and at this point I can take a break to assess the situation. The next step is to jibe the boat. She should do that pretty easily with the help of the motor. Ill try not to wreck the main since I will need it to heel the boat while I try to pull the MOB up the weather side. If I need more heel I think about putting the jib up if I think it will stand it. The more heel I can get the easier time I will have getting the victim of the unfortunate proceedings back on deck.

A ready made device made from stought hook, with a 15 foot length of good line attached could make it easier to get the first attachment to the MOB. Forget trying to tie a line you wont be able to. The victim will certainly be badly bruised by the forgoing.
Lets hope none of us ever have to contemplate this system for real.
Ix

[yukonbob]

To make clear, I would never expect to hoist someone directly into the cockpit, that is very wishful thinking. In reality you're looking to reduce the amount freeboard you'll be pulling the MOB up. If you can get someone so their armpits are at the gunwhales you're doing really good. They should be facing away from the boat, grab the shoulder straps of their life jacket, harness, whatever you can grab, using your legs pull straight up while falling backwards, using your body weight to help pull pull them in. Have pulled many people into rafts this way some twice my weight, very effective. If you have two in the boat each can grab a shoulder and pull or grab a waist once accessible.

[Neo]

This is scary stuff .... After reading all this I might stay home and try sailing on the trailer
Seriously, it is good to discuss the realities of our hobby.

[sailboatmike]

I would think that although the Mac has a very high freeboard at least it has a open transom, my thinking is that the easiest way would have to be through the transom because thats about 2 feet you dont have to lift them up and over