Kinda long...
Well the deed is done. Yesterday afternoon at 3:00, on a falling tide, I pulled up to the Yarmouth-Cousins Island Bridge in Casco Bay to drop the mast with three friends, lots of line, and a case of beer. The chart shows the “authorized” bridge clearance being 25 feet, while the mast on an Ericson 27 is closer to 31 feet. I had spoken with a rigger friend who said he thought I was crazy. He offered plenty of practical advice, but I was still nervous about the undertaking. In the end it came down gently and more easily than I ever would have expected, despite a little help from local law enforcement. The hardest part was talking my three friends into helping me, but over time they have grown accustomed to my rather eccentric ideas and readily agreed to assist after I bribed them with beer.
Here is the short version of how it went down:
Luckily we were able to poach a mooring a hundred yards or so from the bridge, which made the preparation easier. I was a bit dismayed to see all the traffic on the bridge, both foot and vehicular. It was, after all, a sunny and beautiful Columbus Day. Anyhow, I stripped off the boom, secured the topping lift, prepared the dinghy to act as a tug, and released the fore and backstays, and the two upper shrouds. The four lowers are sufficient to keep the masthead pointed at the sky. I used a halyard to cinch a sling up under the spreaders but over the (broken and soon to be removed) radar mount. The top block of my mainsheet tackle was fastened to this sling as high as I could reach.
Now it was go time. Everything was ready, and we were just about to cast off the mooring line to motor over to the bridge, when the Yarmouth Marine Patrol motored past us. We waved and smiled as he passed under the bridge and through the channel we were about to obstruct, all the while thinking, “thank God he didn’t come fifteen minutes later.” He smiled, waved back, and never even looked twice at our dismantled rig. Luckily, he was the only boat to pass under the bridge the whole time we were there.
As soon as the fish patrol had passed out of sight we motored over to the bridge and secured the boat on the wooden cribwork with the mast about four feet from the guardrail, and sticking up over the bridge maybe 6 feet. With the boat made fast with several spring lines, I dinghied over to shore, climbed up the bridge and ran out to where the boat was. I must say, the 6 feet of mast protruding up over the bridge made for a funny sight. Cars were slowing down, bikes, families, kids, all kinds of people stopped to look over the side to see if we had run into the bridge unintentionally. I just told them all that we had been honking the horn for over an hour but the damn bridge just wouldn’t open! We had caused a bit of a traffic snarl, and I knew we didn’t have long before the authorities were on the scene.
I lowered a line from the bridge, hoisted up and secured the top half of the block and tackle to the guardrail, stationed a friend on the bridge to be our Public Relations rep., and dashed back down to the boat. If there had been time to think the whole thing out, this is probably the point where I would have chickened out. The wind was pretty strong, but the water was flat, the boat was hardly moving at all.
We pulled the boat forward the last few feet until the mast was almost touching the bridge, and I had the guy on the foredeck take up on the block and tackle a bit, while the guy on the bridge steadied the top of the spar. I crouched down to undo the first of the four remaining shrouds, when Anders, my buddy on the bridge started yelling to me and sneaking furtive glances down the road. Within seconds one of Yarmouth’s finest poked his head over the bridge. He took a long look at us and said, “Just what in the Hell do you think you are doing?”
I tried to explain what we were doing.
“Not here you’re not,” came his answer. For a moment the five of us stood there and looked at each other. “Why don’t you do it at a boatyard?” the cop asked.
This was the opening we needed. He asked a dozen or so questions, all of which we answered to his satisfaction. He told us that the police station had received fifteen calls from people reporting a sailboat crashing into the bridge, but I think he saw we had the situation under control and seemed to be executing the plan pretty well. I told him we had come all the way from Portland because Yarmouth had the most suitable bridge in the bay. He mentioned he was also a sailor, which surely helped our situation. He was glad the tide was falling, and was sympathetic with outrageous boatyard fees. I also think he was also bored and that he thought he might get to witness a disaster. Anyway, whatever his motivation was, he next asked, “Well, how close to being done are you?” Almost in unison, I said five minutes, Geoff said ten minutes, and Anders said twenty.
There was a long pause. “Well hurry it up then, and don’t even think about doing this again,” the cop said.
With my biggest concern, the traffic, being handled by our new helper, we were free to go for it. It was the moment of truth.
We resumed our positions, and while the mast was steadied from the top, and the tackle gently lifted from the spreaders, I popped out the last pins on the lowers, and she was free. Geoff hoisted the spar up off the step and Alyssa disconnected the internal wiring while I held the foot steady. When it was free, I slowly walked the foot up to the pulpit and held it there while Geoff slowly lowered the spar down to the deck. In one graceful motion, the mast was lowered for the winter and lashed in place. Anders lowered the top tackle down from the bridge, and thanked the cop.
“Nice job,” he said, “but you’ll have to find a different bridge in the springtime.”
In the end, it was much easier than expected. I was glad that we were trying to move quickly and I didn’t have more time to psych myself out. For the final cruise of the season, we motored back to Portland through still water as the sun set off the starboard bow, sipping a well deserved beer and feeling smug about our operation.
