Stepping the mast

I had a few minutes the other day, so I decided to step the mast and see if there were any missing important bits.  This actually went quite well for my first time.  I tied a line from the forestay pin through the guide pulley on the bow and ran it back to the cockpit.  From there I could walk the mast up into the cabin part of the boat while keeping tension on the line and while stepping on the centerboard trunk, I finished the job off with a nice easy tug on the line.  I walked forward and removed the line and secured the forestay.  I am thinking this job will be a bit easier with the use of a jin-pole, I will have to make one up and see how that works.

It looks like several of the stainless pins and clips have been lost over the years and have been replaced with standard nuts and bolts, which of course are now all rusty.  I think I will need about 6 of these to make it right.  I see in the rigging instructions for the boat it talks about spreaders.  I see a couple of brackets on the side of the mast, but no spreaders to be found.  Now as I look at Sandpiper 565’s, I see some with spreaders, and some without.  The ones with spreaders show the shrouds going from the chain-plates to the mast without any angle change at the spreaders (straight shrouds!) If this is the case, there is no need for the spreaders, but I may be missing something.  I will need to do a bit of research.  Other than that, the standing rigging seems to be all there.  That’s exciting.  Now, on to the next project.

I stopped by my local big box wood store today and bought a piece of mahogany to remake the gangway cover edge guides, One is missing, and the other is sketchy at best, we will call it a pattern.  This will need to be replaced in order to make the boat dry.  This is kind of a high priority right now.

Summary: 1/2 hour worked, 14  hours total, $276.50 invested.