"Wilbur Hubbard" wrote in
anews.com:


"Geoff Schultz" wrote in message
.. .
"Wilbur Hubbard" wrote in
anews.com:


wrote in message
oups.com...
... So you can cruise and you can
telephone. But it's not the same as doing one or the other and
doing
it
well. ...

I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying that I'm cruising less well
when, lets say, just for the sake of historical accuracy, I'm
anchor down in Kanton Atoll on a day when it's so calm I can't tell
where the air ends and the water starts and so hot that even the
flies have
taken cover in the shade I call my father on my Iridium phone? Are
you telling me that this offends you in some way? Do we need to be
reduced to sail cloth pants and latitude sailing to be cruising
"well"?

-- Tom.


And sooner or later your phone will make you lazy and inept just
like the poor fella further up this thread who couldn't even figure
out how
to get up the mast without making telephone calls and asking people
how to do it safely. That's pretty disgusting in my humble opinion.
People like him, when they get their friends advice about going up
the
mast, and then they manage to fall off will likely crawl to their
cell
phone, dial up their lawyer and enquire as to how to sue their
friends
for giving bad advice.


Ocne again you're making assumptions about things that you know
nothing
about. In this case I was calling someone who used to work for
Freedom
to ask what the load rating was for the flag halyard rollers. As it
turns out, the rollers designed to support a person. I wasn't about
to
go up the mast while underway without checking. It sounds like you
would have goen up as you wouldn't have had any other option. I did
and
I took it.

I have learned that making assumptions about things I know little or
nothing about is always a good way to get the straight skinny because
it motivates people to want to straighten me out. Flag halyard
rollers(?) do you mean sheeves? It seems to me pretty dumb to over
engineer flag halyard sheeves to carry the weight of a man. Going up a
mast using the old fashioned methods is totally unnecessary these days
when mast steps are easily installed. Again, you're sailing by
committee. You have somebody winch you up the mast, relying on flag
halyard sheeves and winches and their steady hand and shouting back
and forth when you should be going up the mast under your own power on
steps. Doh! Such a radical concept that.


You act like I know nothing about sailing. I typically spend 6-7
months
a year sailing and I've logged over 30,000 miles. I believe that
know a
lot about my boat and sailing. Check my web site if you have any
doubt.

I sort of can't seem to have much respect for people who go to sea
with an unstayed rig. It's an invitation to disaster or should I say,
dismasting?


I love people who continue to dig holes for themselves and show their
ignorance. Unstayed carbon fiber masts don't like holes in them.
Placing mast steps is one of the last things that you'd ever do.

Virtually every sailmaker that I've spoken with will tell you to not use
mast steps due to what it does to the air flow past the mast. If you
don't care about performance, go ahead and put them on your mast.

Carbon fiber masts have an extremely good track record as far as
breaking is concerned. The only failures that Freedom has had is when
someone hit a bridge and from people using a spinnaker going to the top
of the mast instead of 7/8 as recommended. Conventional boat rigging
has a much better chance of failing than a carbon fiber unstayed mast.

As far as Freedom's decision to over-engineer the flag halyard system to
allow it to haul someone to the top: I applaud it. Clearly the
engineers saw that the potential of needing such as system as made sure
that the components used at the mast head could support a person. I've
been up the mast many times and it didn't take a lot of additional
material/weight to do it.

Wilbur, I'm sick and tired of listening to someone who thinks that they
know how to do everything and their way is the only way. So crawl back
into the hole that you came from and if you ever learn civility, come
back. Until then, shut up.

-- Geoff
www.GeoffSchultz.org