There is nothing natural about the photo below.
Like most boat projects, this one took longer and cost more than we had originally planned. We thought we’d have the mast off the boat, everything done and mast back on in about 2 weeks……………………
Everyone done laughing now? Lets continue.
It was actually 6 weeks. Although to be fair, we didn’t do anything project related over the 4th of July weekend.
The biggest time sink was not actually the work on the mast. Â We had a few projects that would much easier to do with the mast down and compression post out of the way. But once the mast was down, and we started digging around (our first mistake), we discovered a few other issues that required attention. Classic scope creep!
I put up a post a couple weeks ago that outlined some of the new stuff we added to the mast. And in addition to all that we also replaced ALL of our standing rigging. This was not planned, but we are glad we did it. In the process of getting quotes for new rigging, we found out a little secret that apparently not a lot of people know about. Fisheries Supply does rigging. Does it very well, and quite abit cheaper than some of our more “famous” riggers in the area. Fisheries does not come out to your boat, so I imagine that is where a lot of the savings are. But if you are willing to do the heavy lifting, pull your rigging and bring it to them, they will do the work and give you back some very nice/shiny new boat jewelry for you to re-install on your boat. And the price difference was a jaw dropper. Having an account at Fisheries Supply helps alot here as well.
With the mast down, we pulled and inspected the chain plates, which is only proper. They were fine, but there was a small bit of rot in the decks near the areas where they go through the decks. This was one of the unexpected bits. But, Tawn took care of that. Some of the chain plate bolts need replacing. The actual replacing of the bolts is easy. Finding exact replacements for bolts that were installed in Taiwan in the early ’80s, is neither easy, or cheap.
We also remounted our windlass (Lofrans Tigres). The previous owner had it installed in a manner that created a persistent leak when it rained. We tried every trick in the book, but could never figure out how to stop the leak completely. So while the mast was down, we redid the mounting and plugged the old holes. So far, so good.
The biggest and to me scariest bit, was removing the compression post. We did this for two reasons. One was we wanted to remove an old, leaking 20 gallon fresh water tank. That tank lived just forward of the compression post. Without removing the compression post, the only way to get it out was to cut it out. Which I almost decided to do. This brings us to the second reason for pulling the compression post. The compression post had about a foot of fresh water standing in it. The water got there from running down the wires coming down from the mast. There is no good/easy way to completely prevent this water from traveling down the wires and into the compression post. But typically, there should be a small hole or two drilled at the bottom of the post to allow the water to drain out on it’s own….on our boat, there was not.
With the post out, we drained the water and tested the post for soundness and drilled a drain hole and put the post back in place. I type this up in a quick paragraph or two, but honestly it was a lot of hot, dirty, itchy work that we could not have done with out the help of a couple very knowledgeable and helpful friends. You have no idea how grateful I am to my friend Ethan for his help with the fiberglass.
I know I should take pictures of all this as I’m doing it. But to be honest, it never occurs to me to take a picture while I’m actually doing the work.
Tawn took a picture the day after we re-stepped the mast. It’s the best I could do. :)
And I promise, that picture was taken yesterday, not months ago.