Working on the Mast Part 1

I haven’t posted an update in over a year. Not because I haven’t made progress, but because I haven’t made any meaningful progress. My original idea was to wrap up each project in two or three posts. But every time I try to work on a project, I get stuck. So I try a different project, and get stuck. Every bolt is seized. Everything needs two people. The weather sucks. It just never ends. I’m in Seattle, so it rains 9 months out of the year, and I can only work on the boat over the weekends, and sometimes I just need to sleep. Plus there’s always some sort of stupid traffic issue that prevents me from getting to the boat. So the next few posts will be shorter, but showing what little progress I’ve made in the last year.

Let’s start with the mast. The idea was to rewire the mast, replace the lights with LEDs, replace the standing rigging, replace the lines, feed the lines through the mast, so they don’t bang around, install steps to make it easier to climb the mast, and maybe paint the mast black.

Normally, when running new wires, it’s easiest to tie the new wire to the old wire, then use the old wire to pull the new wire through. But I couldn’t do that in this case, because the old wire had snapped, so as soon as I started pulling on it, the old wire came through, but the new wire didn’t. Figures. While I’m at it, I figured I should run the wires through some conduit, to limit vibration, and sound.

The VHF cable was fine. But I needed to replace the mast light, the spreader lights, the steaming light, and run a new cable for the wind sensor.

We tried using a metal snake specifically for feeding wires through stuff. That didn’t work.

 

Here’s the problem. There were a bunch of these foam blocks throughout the mast. It looked like they had been tied to some tie wire at some point, but the wire had long since rusted and fallen apart, so getting the foam out of the way was next to impossible. I got three blocks out, and I know there are at least two more still in the mast. I understand the logic behind them. They prevent the wires from slapping around inside the mast. But they also make replacing the wire a huge pain in the ass.

 

 

 

Anyway, the conduit was too big to fish through the foam. I tried attaching a hole saw to the end, but that got stuck too. I tried using some PVC pipe, but I didn’t glue it together, and one of the connectors came loose. It’s still in the mast. Maybe when I’m ready to restep the mast, I’ll be able to shake it out, but I doubt it. I tried taping some metal rods to the conduit and pushing that through. It got stuck on something. Maybe the foam. Maybe a rivet. I don’t know.

Then, to make matters worse, as I was pulling the conduit back out, it started falling apart. Perfect. That’s exactly what I needed. Pulling that out was a joy. At this point, I gave up on the conduit. I was making progress with the metal rod, so I tried just taping the wire to the rod. I was getting close, but not close enough. Plus, even if I could get the wire to the spreaders, I couldn’t get the wire through the hole.

 

 

Eventually, we found a solution. We took the hook end of the wire snake, flattened it, then fished it through the mast. It was small enough that it could get through the foam. Once we could see it through the hole for the wire, we used a coat hanger and some pliers and some cursing, and fished the snake out of the hole. Then we tied a string to the snake, gave the snake it’s hook back, taped over everything, and pulled the snake down through the mast, dragging the string with it.

Then we did basically the same thing, but in reverse, to bring the wire to the hole. Rather than bending the wire into a hook, I slit a small hole in the insulation a few inches from the end, then tied the string through that.

Repeat times 4.

 

I may have had an orgasm when it finally worked.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In order to do all that, we had to remove the mast head. The problem here was that the mast is aluminum, but the bolts were stainless steel. So corrosion was the enemy. It was the same issue with the ends of the spreaders. We tried penetrating oil. We tried a hammer driver. We tried prayer. In the end, Rick stopped by to use his manly man strength and got the bolts out. Getting the stupid thing off the mast was my job. I got a 5 lb sledge hammer and a thick chisel. Then I got angry and Hulk smashed it. It took some time, hitting it at various locations so it would come off evenly, but it did. Yay!

While he was working on it, Rick noticed a small crack, so I needed to get that fixed. I also noticed that my plan for running the new line through the mast couldn’t work, because there was a metal plate blocking the path. For fuck’s sake. It just never ends.

 

There are two rows of pulleys. The line for the head sail goes up, over on two pulleys, and down the aft side. The main sail goes up, over on the other two pulleys, and down the bow side. I could potentially run four different lines. I want to run four different lines.  I could have one for the headsail, one for the mainsail, one for the spinnaker, and one for hauling my fat ass up the mast, if I ever needed to. But I can’t. Because of this fucking metal plate. This is stupid.

I dropped the mast head off at the welder, and asked if he could make holes so my dreams weren’t completely dashed. I assume the plate was so the mast head could sit on the mast, so I wanted to keep that. Here’s what they came up with. Should work perfectly. There are no sharp edges, but I might put some sort of grommet on them, just to be safe.

 

In smaller tasks, the steaming light was attached to the mast with ductape, hope, and maybe a paperclip. It’s hard attaching a flat thing to a round thing. So I came up with this idea. I can attach it to the mast with some high bond double sided tape. It’s not like the LED light weighs anything.

 

 

 

 

 

I sealed it with epoxy, painted it black, and attached the LED to it. Looks so sexy. It’s hard to tell in these photos, but the sides are actually on a slight angle, so it doesn’t look like a crescent moon brick.

 

 

 

 

 

Speaking of black and sexy, the mast foot looked like it had massively corroded. It turns out that they just poured some sort of sealant on it. Like putty. Fucking animals. Luckily, since it was such a shittily done job, it was easy to remove. It practically pealed off, as if it were a mold.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then we used a wire brush to clean it up as best as we could. I wanted to remove it completely, to examine the bolts, and to run the mast wires through the boot, instead of out the side of the mast, but it turns out it is hella stuck on there. Like seriously attached.

Oh, and this isn’t related to anything, but there was some sort of rubbery stuff that was in the bottom of the mast, that ended up plugging the drain hole. That was surprisingly difficult to remove. But I got it off, and now the mast will drain correctly.

Anyway. Once it was clean and back to just metal, we taped the area off and painted it, you guessed it, black and sexy.

 

It looks like originally, there were two wires that went through the foot. One is a ground for lightning protection, and the other, was probably for the mast lights. I crimped the ground back on, because that’s important. The other was sealed in there, and I haven’t been able to find a way to get it out. So not much I can do about that. Besides, the bottom of the boot is mounted to a compression post and a box, so I can’t even see what’s going on in there, and I’m worried that if I play with it, I might damage the structural integrity of the mast.

 

 

As far as the standing rigging is concerned, the forestay was replaced with a new stainless steel one. I have a hank-on style headsail, and so that needed to stay metal. The rest of the stays will be upgraded to Dyneema. I found some UV protected Dyneema that was a little bit bigger than I needed, for a really good price, and I have enough to redo all of the stays if I ever need to. I put some locking eye splices on them, which is so freaking easy with Dyneema.

And that’s as far as I’ve gotten. The spreader ends are corroded to hell, so I need to take them off the mast, and to the welder to fix, but the boat yard had to put the mast on the rack, and I don’t need to do that anytime soon, so that’s fine. I found some paint for aluminum boats, but cleaning a 45 foot mast plus a 16 foot boom sounds terrible. I also need to make something like 30 steps, and drill/tap/screw each one onto the mast, which will take forever. Sadly, since the mast is aluminum, welding isn’t exactly an option because it radiates heat, and would probably melt all the brand new wires, so fuck that. Bolts it is.