Pulling a mast using another yacht rafted up.

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I have a friend with a Lion 34 wooden yacht. He wants to pull his rig out and bring it ashore to refit.
The local barge company wants close to $600 dollars for out and back in with absolutely minimum rigging work.

I've never done it but has anyone here got first hand experience of rafting another boat alongside and using a halyard to pull it out and lay it down?

If so : what are the traps for young players?

I think you could do it but I confident you'd cause more than $600 damage if it went wrong.

Might be better to have a yacht on both sides create a bridge crane.

Lions are pretty narrow so it should be okay. My brother used to do this with his 28 footer. I have seen it done with a tree and with a bridge. No worries. Just be careful and take your time.

If I could make sure there are no stink boats around and you can get two narrow designs, the puller with a masthead rig or halyard, I would feel better doing it myself. I don't really like getting other people to work on my boat as I built her and know her best (in fact no one has worked on my boat apart from one outboard guy once - I even change my own rigging wire, one measured stay at a time). I did get Kankama's mast out using a travel lift once, which went well. We were very sheltered and the lift crane was nice and high compared to the boat. Can you get the boat to somewhere that has a crane?

I investigated the alternative ways of lifting my masts, gin pole, legs, bridge in the end I took the easy way out and put her in the travel lift dock and got a franna to lift em cost $240 in out. Marina charged me for a 30 ft boat space though, but when the yard filled up they put me in a shed so that was nice.
Are you going to take the mast ashore or do the work onboard ? Assuming it's an ally mast

I like this one.
Let's leave aside the fact that there is a crane / barge available and look at this problem as if there isn't.
If ringle's mate simply doesn't have $600 at hand, the barge is not an option.

A deck stepped mast can be reasonably safely lowered with a gin pole rig.
A keel step mast is a completely different story. It will have to be raised straight up until it is clear.
Southace's suggestion of rafting a boat either side solves this problem really neatly.
But, what happens if you can't round up two boats to help out.
A lot of thought and preparation would seem to be the key to success on this one.
There is a very good video of a keel stepped mast being removed from a catalina 27

The guys on SV Pestilence borrowed a davit from a cruiser.




Gary

Ok so a brief update.

I helped another friend step his etchells mast the other day we skied the outboard end of a spinnaker pole on a large 50+ foot boat And deflected a masthead halyard through a snatch block. The pole was held by topper, fore and aft guys at a high angle. The etchells was rafted up with its mast position just forward of the mother ship's lowers.

It was effortless and we conjectured that we could have quite easily have stepped a bigger rig.

Admittedly having a larger mother ship that was largely unaffected by the weight of the rig being lifted helped.

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PacificStar said..
As a former etchells sailor, we got quite use to putting mast up / down when taking the boat to regattas

with practice could do the whole job in less than 30 mins. a mate & i would have done yours for...oh...say $500...

cheers,

Ha !!

well yes ; I've pulled j24 and etchells rigs with pure young bloke grunt.

However given me and my mates advancing age , this was a case of the old bulls enjoying it all.
The use of a larger mothership and spinnaker pole made pulling the rig a doddle.

Would that we were young again. ??