Theis,

I finished my boarding ladders today, so they are complete, however, I need to improve on the lanyard so that it remains in position hanging over the rail. At present they blow up onto the deck in fifteen plus knots of wind. I am experimenting with everything from weighting them to clever little devices like suction cups etc.

Rather than a set of additional ladders forward at the shrouds, I am experimenting with using my jack line tails.

I bought a single 55-foot West Marine jack line made of polyester webbing with sewn loops on both ends. I have two pad eyes about a foot apart on the bow. They are located on either side of the centerline mooring cleat. So I center the jack line at that cleat and lead the two ends through the pad eyes and back along the edge of the cabin to two pad eyes on either side of the boat just forward of the jib sheet winches. It lies flat to the deck.

I tie a bowline there, and lead the remaining ten feet of both ends of the jack lines forward again on the outside of the lifelines and shrouds, being careful to attach some West Marine Velcro straps made for securing cable. The straps are made of webbing with Velcro. I set the straps up so that they secure the tails of my jack line to the forward lower shroud and a lifeline attachment point so that they won't wash overboard, but so that if someone were to pull hard from the water below on one of the lines, it would break free of th Velcro.

The last eighteen inches of either end of the jack line including the sewn loop at the terminus of the jack line hang over the rail, so that an overboard sailor would have a chance of reaching it. If such a sailor did reach the loop and pull, the ten foot jack line tail would come loose all the way back to the rear pad eye. This would allow the overboard sailor to get back to the emergency ladder while remaining attached to the boat.

Now the ladders are on either side by the boarding step that appeared in the photo that I posted earlier. They are deployed by pulling on another looped webbing strap (lanyard).

I originally thought that I would build a second set of ladders to place at the shrouds, but this jackline tail idea may be a better idea, since the rail is quite high at the location of the shrouds. The idea is that if a sailor fell over on a harness forward of the shrouds, the shrouds would prevent him from traveling back to the ladder without unclipping from his harness safety strap. However, with the addition of overboard jack line tail, the sailor can conceivably clip into the loop on the end of the tail and then unclip from his six foot harness line, and then move back along the rail or drift back in the sea, while tethered to the jack line to the location of the emergency ladder. (This would take a second carbiner however, and since there is but room for one carbiner to clip onto my harness, and the current carbiner holds the harness closed and is attached at the other end to the main section of the jackline. I have to think a little longer about solutions to that problem). A harness with two safety lines would solve the problem.

I have also attached the emergency ladder release strap around the jack line tail so that if it works as planned, the release of the tail from its Velcro strap will also release the ladder. The jack line also helps stabilize the ladder so that it won't wash overboard when under sail with the rail in the sea.

I tested it yesterday day at up to 30+ degrees of heel, and it stayed on deck. Even before this modification, it just flopped over the rail and hung there. Inelegant, but not a system failure. Thenagain, who knws what woudl happen with a running sea in extrme conditions.

Tthere s too much wind out there yesterday to run a simulation of jack ine or ladder deployment. I needed to be close to the tiller most of the time, since the wind was fifteen to twenty knots, I was fully rigged (no reef in the main). There were no hidey-holes to duck out of the wind, and there was a good-sized running swell, and I was alone. Even after dark, I had spray coming over the bow when I was a mile or so off shore.

Great night sail though. White caps illuminated by the blue bioluminescence in the sea, a trailing blue wake behind me, and the Milky Way squarely on the bow as I headed south west.