Retired from newspapers and television, currently sailing Thelonious II, a 1984 Ericson 381.
I had no issue with where Ericson chose to store the whisker pole, which locks nicely into cast aluminum brackets on the starboard deck. But since the first day my size 13 feet had complained bitterly about it. My feet claimed that it was difficult to move forward without tripping over each other, that I sometimes put one of them on the large conical section in such a way as to throw the other off balance, and that on the whole the arrangement only made sense to parts of the body that aren't feet, and that if the Ericson heads had had any brains they would not have put a 12-foot-long stumbling block on the way to the bow.
All right, all right, I can listen.
There's a Tartan 37 on my dock with its pole on the mast. That looks cool and it's out of the way. But the gear and the track are expensive, put weight aloft and add to the windage. How often do I use a whisker pole, anyhow? When not making a passage, hardly at all. There's another fellow at the club who hangs his pole--it's a spinnaker pole--from the lifelines, using scraps of rope. A good idea that his feet probably came up with. Looks kind of half-baked, though.
Forespar makes a somewhat more sophisticated stanchion-mount pole bracket for only about $50 each. And it turns out that they bolt on quite securely with three integral machine screws, and have a clever rotating arm that snaps in place to hold the pole with moderate security.
I put them on two stanchions, snapped the pole in place, and found there was less room than ever between lifelines and shrouds. Feet were happier, but now my knees were bent out of shape.
So, cleverly, I turned one of the Forespar brackets the other way 'round, and suddenly, for the price of only a somewhat inside-out look, there was all the room in the world on the starboard side. How nice. How easy. How come this took me a year to figure out?
I made a cover for the pole in 90 minutes flat using my $150 Singer sewing machine. Superman can fly, I can sew. Before somebody claims an inappropriate comparison, consider that Superman was born knowing how to fly. I taught myself how to sew.
I suppose lines could catch on that long pole-end up at the bow. So far they never have.
All right, all right, I can listen.
There's a Tartan 37 on my dock with its pole on the mast. That looks cool and it's out of the way. But the gear and the track are expensive, put weight aloft and add to the windage. How often do I use a whisker pole, anyhow? When not making a passage, hardly at all. There's another fellow at the club who hangs his pole--it's a spinnaker pole--from the lifelines, using scraps of rope. A good idea that his feet probably came up with. Looks kind of half-baked, though.
Forespar makes a somewhat more sophisticated stanchion-mount pole bracket for only about $50 each. And it turns out that they bolt on quite securely with three integral machine screws, and have a clever rotating arm that snaps in place to hold the pole with moderate security.
I put them on two stanchions, snapped the pole in place, and found there was less room than ever between lifelines and shrouds. Feet were happier, but now my knees were bent out of shape.
So, cleverly, I turned one of the Forespar brackets the other way 'round, and suddenly, for the price of only a somewhat inside-out look, there was all the room in the world on the starboard side. How nice. How easy. How come this took me a year to figure out?
I made a cover for the pole in 90 minutes flat using my $150 Singer sewing machine. Superman can fly, I can sew. Before somebody claims an inappropriate comparison, consider that Superman was born knowing how to fly. I taught myself how to sew.
I suppose lines could catch on that long pole-end up at the bow. So far they never have.
