Repairing the Radar

We recently pulled down the ship’s radar to send it to the friendly neighbourhood techmagician. If you want to see some cool photos of the inside of the radar (you should), Stephanie’s got you covered.

One of the handy things about hoisting and lowering stuff on a tall ship is that there are plenty of halyards and such that you can borrow for a day or two. To get the radar down, we yoinked the nock staysail halyard and the ship’s rubbish net. At sea, our rubbish bags get tied down under the jibbom using this net. Its vaguely triangular shape made it difficult to get the radar to sit straight, but we managed.

Working on the mainmast is much more challenging than the foremast: there’s nowhere near as much space but it’s also much more open. There were three of us crammed onto the small crosstrees as we carefully removed the radar cover, lowered it down, disconnected its signal cables, hoisted the radar cover, secured it, unbolted the radar, got it into the net and lowered it to the deck.

To replace the radar, we worked a little smarter. We keep a stash of small pieces of line for teaching sail trainees the various knots used on board. They find plenty of use elsewhere, such as lashing down furniture at sea. This new net let us get the radar onto its bracket without removing the halyard, which made the procedure much less nerve-wracking.

Speaking of netting, I’ve finished my big ropework project. Can you guess what it is? (Photo credit: Stephanie Katz.)