Chrysler Sailors Forum

Maybe you've seen this. I remember seeing a guy with our sized sailboat who stepped his mast back while driving under a bridge.

This method would work good for getting him through some shallows too!

http://www.wimp.com/mastbridge/

We reasently followed a boat with a 63' mast under a bridge that was reading 64'. We stayed in radio contact to help him untill he got clear, but I really wanted to ask him what he was doing on the ICW with a sailboat that size.

It almost looks like he has done that before.
It was rigged so well
Do you think it's water on the weight bags?

That's beautiful. Where there's a will there's a way. Hope he never has to make an emergency hard turn to starboard though. Could get very ugly

Got to be waterbags, neat part is, if the boat turned hard stbd, the bags would drop into the water, the weight would be gone, so the boat would only heel over just far enough for them to enter the water.

Yeah, I'm guessing he's done that once or twice.

Forgive my ignorance, but how the heck did he get those bags to go out to the side, and up-and-down like that!? That's one cool trick!

Totally guessing here, but I would think he used the lines for his sail to lift and drop it--or perhaps he has dedicated lines for it.

Pushing them out past the center of gravity would cause the boat to tip, and that would cause them to swing out further until they hit the water (assuming they were filled with water.) If you look closely, he has dedicated lines used to pull them back in over the boat, which would cause the boat to tip back up.

Maybe he has it all set up on winches back to the the cockpit. Unless his crew went below deck, cuz I don't see anyone else topside.

I couldn't help but wonder who would have enough kahunas to pull off a move like that ... and at a good clip too, so I googled it up and found out this about the guy. Interesting.....

http://www.davidparrot.com/David_Parrot/Welcome.html

I've watched this clip many times and it never ceases to amaze and fascinate me. Sometimes, I think I'm resourceful or clever but the captain of Aratinga, David Parrot, reminds me that I've only scratched the surface of possibilities and that I still have so much to learn. I'm certain I would have really enjoyed meeting him and I have no doubt that I'd have walked away from the encounter having been enriched by the experience. My humble thanks to Captain Parrot for the lesson.

Theres a service that uses the water bag system for sailboats crossing florida thru the Okeechobee water way do to a fixed bridge that has a clearance less then 40' from the water line. from my understanding they stay busy.