but in my youth I was sent aloft to varnish the mainmast on a 100-foot schooner . . no backup, no harness, just a pot of varnish and a brush (that was after having been up once already to sand the damn thing . . .
And I don't recall ever using a backup of any kind until I was very much older. Can't even remember the last time I went up a mast.
I'd be terrified of ever using and electric winch after that dreadful story out of Antigua last year where the woman using it and the guy who went to her assistance got badly mangled.
But as for older not necessarily being smarter . . . a few years ago, Don Street had me wind him up Iolaire's mast on the main halyard . . wire halyard on a reel winch just like the one I broke my arm with in 1973! Coming down, he asked me why I was going so slow! Of course, a few years before that, he would have simply climbed the rigging. At 75 (as he was then) he wasn't so confident.