It takes a village

Remember the simple little whirly gig look thing from my last post? It's  a rather innoculous looking device isn't it?

It just points into the wind and whirls away, and remote sensors pick up how fast it's whirling away and which way it's pointing based on electrical resistors confuslator (pronounced confuse you later) technologies that then sends that information down to a display that you can read placed somewhat more convenient than 54.4 feet up in air.
Simple right?
Um. No.

You see, to send that information down below you have to either buy into wireless technology to magically transport it or a hard piece of cave man technology called multiple wires.

I'm not a Luddite, really I'm not. Wireless works.

It also costs twice as much and (okay, I'm a Luddite) I can't hold it in my hand 600 miles from the nearest Maytag technician and fix it myself.

What that means is someone has to go up the mast - five and a half stories up - in a nylon chair with a rope that is of indeterminate age and actually work with tools on a skinny piece of aluminum that costs upwards of $8,000  to replace just to mount a little $500 whirly gig I want so I don't have to stick my head out the 'window'.

Yeah well, not a one man job.

Meet the crew - not exactly a Iwo Jima moment but awe inspiring nonetheless.

That's John in the aforementioned nylon chair, his lovely wife Donna on belay (to the right holding the safety line),  and me (white sweater) cranking away to pull John up the mast.

Here's the fun part.

I'd met only the guy in the ball cap next to me before. He's Resolute_ZS on www.sailnet.com.
I met him when he drove 2 hours to help me get the boat ready for bringing home, and he rode the boat home as crew - a 10 hour day for him. Never laid eyes on him before.
Donna and John, same thing - met them that day, known her for months as DRFerron on www.sailnet.com. They also drove down from the Philly area (2 hours) just to help me do this.

We started at about  11:30, finished at 5:30. Six hours. John sat in the chair at the top of the mast for almost SIX HOURS.

Poor Resolute (I'm not sure if I can use his actual name) has  18 hours or more of working on my boat and has not had the chance to sail her yet.

These are the people you meet when you love sailing, help others and share. I hope I never stop. 

The person taking the picture? Jimgo from sailnet. His boat was at my pier for 3 weeks while diagnosing a transmission problem that occurred while moving his boat from Deltaville VA to home near Atlantic City.

Serendipity doesn't just happen.

Pay it forward.