Mast_Restoration

The mast for the boat has been in storage for possibly most of the past 20 years. It was returned to the boat upon closing, and brought home for refinishing.

The mast was taken apart. The horizontal vanes are wood, the mast itself is hollow, made of two fiberglass sides.

The mast was found to be splitting near the top. It was sanded, and the top section was reduced with a wood rasp and sanding to slightly less than 1.5" diameter. Thickened epoxy was applied to the top and bottom joining crack, and then xynol (a polyester fabric that works better in some cases than fiberglass - though that was not terribly important in this case, since it was just a limited patch) was applied with thickened epoxy.

Mast hardware and horizontal vanes removed:

Xynol patch applied to top of mast - to be faired, sanded, and eventually painted.

An LED masthead light was ordered. This will be easy to mount on the mast - but will not provide an all-around light solution. The trick is that an all-around anchor light really needs to be higher (above the bimini level). The mast barely goes up over the level of the windscreen on the flybridge. Even with a 24" extension pole, an all-around light would not be high enough to get over the bimini - and may well be too high to fit under the covered slip.