Last week was huge in terms of checking things off the list. We put in the counterpoise for our Single Side-Band/Ham Radio. The SSB/Ham will let us talk to people and, once we add another expensive piece of equipment to the system, send & receive e-mail. The counterpoise is composed of 2" wide copper foil that we've glued to the hull in the cockpit lockers. The more counterpoise, the stronger our signal. That's the theory at least. We haven't tested it yet.
The other problem we tackled was giving us the heebie jeebies. This
used to be the bottom 1 17/32" of our 58 foot mast. It's supposed to be flat across the bottom.Notice the pitting in the metal and the missing metal! That's the base of the whole rig. The mast is aluminum and it goes through the cabin top and rests on a stainless steel plate that sits on the keel. Very strong but dis-similar metals corrode. The chemical reaction between the stronger, more noble, metal corrodes the weaker, less noble metal. Stainless steel is one of the most noble metals and aluminum is not. Visions of being in a 30 knot blow and having the weak side of the mast bottom collapse, sending the whole rig into the ocean was not comforting so we took action and advantage of the warm spell last week. We made our way over to Bert Jabin's Marina where they'd agreed to pull our mast, lay it on the ground for a few hours and put it back in at a fixed cost.
We did this procedure 10 years ago and it was quite dramatic. The less experienced yard had a crane not quite big enough for our mast. They lifted up and the corrosion was so bad all 9 tons of boat lifted up out of the water too. It let loose with a bang and the boat dropped back into the water as the mast shot up narrowly missing Russ but taking out our cabin heater.
Jabin's knows what they're doing and they have the equipment to do it right. At 2500 pounds of pull they stopped tugging and Russ pounded on the base as we jiggled it from on deck. Pull was increased to 3100 pounds we jiggled more, hammered more and out she came. Not with a dramatic whomp which was just fine.
As often happens with boat projects a small project turns into a bigger one. We decided as long as the mast was down to add spreader lights that will illuminate the deck, fill a bunch of holes, fix the corrosion and try to prevent it from happening again and a few other items. An overnight stay was planned and we'd go back in Thursday morning.
To try to slow down or prevent the corrosion problem we painted the new clean edge with rust prevention paint and then multiple coats of base paint. Then wrapped the whole thing in super electrical tape.
A separation between stainless and aluminum was called for so we cut out a piece of 1/4" Lexan that would sit in the tabs of the mast step and then the mast would sit on it. We also sprayed CRC on the step to prevent corrosion. And since sailors are a superstitious lot, we siliconed a coin onto the Lexan as tradition requires. Don't know how we'd been lucky in our sailing so far since there was no coin under the mast!
Thursday morning a gale was blowing, literally. Winds gusting to 40 knots. No way was our mast going to be swinging from the end of a crane in that wind. So we got another day to find more projects to do on the mast.
So glad we put that lucky coin in place
because the mast was put back in on Friday the 13th!
A few puffs made getting the mast back in a bit of a challenge. Russ was below guiding the base onto the mast step and I was on deck holding onto our roller furling to pull the mast upright against the wind. I was glad when one of the yard guys lent a hand.
The black lines on the mast are measuring the kids' heights. We started doing it when we first got Andante and updated it when we got to interesting places or events. So now they'll be 1 17/32 shorter and then add 1/4" for the Lexan . . .
We put the standing rigging back on and tightened everything enough to see us back to our slip. Fine tuning will come later . . .
