Hi,

The Prusik knot might even be a better idea than the icycle hitch. I used it to lift my aluminium mast with an A-frame even that its weight was only 12 kg. I tried lifting the mast with the boat on the trailor in my driveway long before splashing but I did not know which knot to use that can be easily undone when the job of mast raising is finished. I asked the question in the Boat Builder Central ( Builders Forum ) and soon got the answer of a circumnavigation sailor Tony Johnson to use the Prusik knot. He also told me that this knot was invented by my fellow Austrian Prusik who was no sailor but wanted to transport a music instrument with a rope which he could release quickly after use. The definition is :  Prusik Knot. Slide and grip knot used for climbing a static rope. Principal use is allowing a rope to be climbed - ascending or "Prusiking". But if you use a smooth aluminium mast instead of a static rope it works also very well. As I mentioned that the idea came from Tony Johnson I can warmly recommend his book about his circumnavigation The Captain and Mr. Shrode

Anonymous wrote:

Already mentioned for lifting a slick tapered mast:
The icycle hitch

Worth trying!

My understanding is that the icicle hitch would not be appropriate in this situation.  Lifting a mast involves holding the weight of the mast from initial lift-off to eventual set-down, i.e. a continuous, constant load.  The instructions for the icicle hitch stress that there will be an initial movement of the hitch when taking up the load, so repeated unloading and re-loading of the hitch is likely to involve incremental slip due to repetition of this initial movement on re-tightening. 

Looking at the layout of the hitch, it consists of several parallel turns around the base item, which provide an initial (weak) grip for the second part of the hitch to pull against during the initial load take-up.  This second part consists of two diagonal sections of the rope, running in opposite directions.  During the initial tightening these two diagonals then act in the manner of a Lewis (aka Lewisson - see Wikipedia), used by masons for lifting heavy stone blocks, and which relies on a necessarily constant longitudinal force to maintain the friction required to prevent slipping of the gripped object.  The stronger the longitudinal force, the greater the gripping force, and hence the greater the friction.  And this is how the icicle hitch can achieve the seemingly impossible of gripping on a smooth, adversely tapering object, as suggested by its name.

Anonymous wrote:

Cy,

I too have mostly used aluminium battens on my boats. The challenge is to prevent the batten parrels (and HK-parrels in my case) from slipping, without having to drill holes and use screws.

One method I used was to wind a few rounds of tape around the battens to form a ridge where the parrel is to be tied on. Then I lashed the batten parrel outside this tape (5mm string, which was then tied to the 20mm webbing).

Another way was to pinch a couple of loops under a hose-clamp, as seen on p. 11 in Chapter 7 of TCPJR  (https://bit.ly/3kjEcgc ). Now, these shown hose-clamps eventually started to rust, so later I replaced them with another sort of rolling hitch which seems to work.

Keeping lashings of any sort from slipping on aluminium is quite a challenge. I guess I should write up my findings, so far, some day...

Good luck!
Arne

Thank Arne, that's very helpful.

I'm poring over your articles, as we speak. There's a lot to learn...

Take care,

Cy

Anonymous wrote:

MR Walter.
I strongly recommend using flat webbing (about 20mm wide) for batten parrels. Rope type batten parrels tend to catch each other when hoisting sail.

Arne

Thanks Arne,

I'll look at that too. How do you secure them to your battens (mine are aluminium tube)?

Cy

Thank you Asmat. Thank you Paul.

I'll try the Dyneema and pipe for the Batten Parrels as mine are polyprop (same as the LHPs) and bind up raising the sails.

I think I've got some spare/old multiplait aboard - I'll give that a go too...

Thanks

Cy