On the Top of the world

Or close to it.

My first task was to change the Jib halyard lines, as they caused me trouble in the past. The splicing made the line larger and got stuck on the top of the mast, which made impossible to get the sail down when needed.

Solution : smaller line, and a knot instead of a splice.

Obviously the quick replacement technique - lashing two lines together and made them go around the block on the top of mast from the deck did not work, and the line junction broke.

Next step, climbing the mast and somehow, hoping to be able to thread the new line through the block overt here.

As you can tell it is chilly at night in Mexico,
or in the early morning.

The good idea : wire.
The bad idea : only one piece, no tape and no sewing stuff

Mid way.

Almost at the top. View is beautiful, as always here.

Gotcha.
Managed to catch a smaller leading line with a wire through the 2 blocks and the width of the mast. 

It ended up to be way harder that I thought. Not the climbing part, or staying at 10m up. It is like my second home now, I used to have the fear of heights, now I feel I could sleep over there. And I almost did. I spent more than one hour, struggling to hijack this line through the blocks using a steel wire. I almost gave up several time. At one point, I was just waiting for someone to walk the dock I could hail to, because I forgot some tools I needed. Having an extra line to haul things from the deck was a great idea. Using my typical double setup with a second harness and a safety line, it feels secure enough.

Well, it was my lucky day, and I eventually managed to catch the line. What a relief. The next step would have been to remove the mast somehow, which is impractical in the time frame we have until the passage.

Overall it took me more time than expected, but it is all good now, and we have a new line.

Next step, the autopilot.