“INDEPENDENT VOICE” ARTICLE; THE SPREADER SAGA CONTINUES; ELECTION RESULTS
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador, 18 October 2006

“Independent Voice” article

I posted my article about global-free trade some weeks ago, i.e. at about the same time as it appeared in print in Ontario. I notice it has now been posted to the website of the newspaper. www.independentvoice.ca. It made it to the front page.

The Spreader Saga continues (skipped this if you don’t like boat stuff)

As I wrote in the last blog, laying out a work plan in my mind is a long way from actually getting the job done. (Another cruiser pointed out, as an aside, that George W. Bush is finding the same thing out about world domination.) So, just like Barbara’s Son, I plan to “stay the course” despite all the difficulties, making the bits and pieces of my rig “enjoy the fruits of democracy” as I understand it. (Hmm! Isn’t that what Dubbya has been saying too?)

After Victor, the bosun down at the Club de Yate, finished slushing the lower shrouds, after Maestro Quanqui’s machine shop finished making the spreader base-plates and getting them galvanized in Guayaquil, and after Maestro Luiz made up the wooden spreaders – everything now seriously heavy-duty; we may roll right over on the first wave -, I am set to start reinstalling the rig. Andrew and his family had left for Canada aboard their S/V Nueva Vida. (Indeed, more than ten boats have departed Bahia de Caraquez for Canada, Panama, Central America and Mexico [sometimes via The Galapagos] or just the 200 Nm down the coast to Salinas for their annual haul-out before either returning here or heading north or west.] Will I be able now to find a helper.

Enter Bill of S/V Que Onde, a native San Franciscan who has been solo sailing for several years. He returned recently to his boat from his travels in the Andes where he also volunteered at an orphanage in a remote part of Peru. He is a trained rigger and he offered to give us a hand to pull me up the mast. I have not yet got tackle that that allows me to pull myself up, and Kathleen does not feel she has the strength. One result is that I rarely get to the top of the mast to inspect for myself: I am the one who is always pulling someone else up. This has always worried me a bit since I have not seen firsthand what the mast is like from top to bottom since the first and only time I was ever up there - back in Comox, British Columbia in 2002. Kathleen and Andrew both said it looked all right but it is not good to have to reply only on second-hand reports.

So here’s my chance! With the renovated lower shrouds already back on board and the bronze turnbuckles installed and waiting at deck level, it is time to install those the new steel/galvanised spreader base-plates, hook up the lower shrouds to them, and then remove the two upper shrouds, the backstay and perhaps even the jibstay to take down to Victor for slushing. With the four-part purchase tackle still installed after weeks of intermittent use, Bill first pulls me up to the spreaders in the bosuns chair (his more comfortable version rather than my very uncomfortable chair) and then starts sending up tools and bits and pieces in a bucket attached to the jib halyard. (Kathleen stands by the extra safety line, i.e. the topping lift attached to the harness around my chest).

Everything gets awkward while a bosuns chair is swinging around at spreader level and normally simple job at deck level can suddenly get a little fraught. We have chosen a time in the early morning tidal cycle when there should be no waves and before the overcast clears away for the naked sun to grill me. But every little wavelet and every rocking of the boat from people on deck moving around is transmitted to the height and augmented. You need one hand (and your legs and feet) to hold on, one hand to hold the first plate in place and one hand to get the foot-long galvanized bolt through the plate to the other side. Then you use your spare (fourth) hand to hammer the bolt through. With one more hand you try to twist the nut onto the threaded portion that is just peeping through enough on the other side to be seen but not yet quite out far enough to take the bolt. Many-armed goddess Shiva would make an ideal rigger!

This whole procedure is made more, shall we say, ‘interesting’ because the backs of the plates were coated in a white and sticky bedding compound of thick pudding consistency. It is meant to stay flexible over years so as to provide a waterproof seal between the plates and the wooden mast. We don’t want rainwater to get in behind the plates and cause rot, now, do we?

Also, the through-bolts have to be protected inside the wood. The classical method is to coat them in pine tar, which is what I am doing. The tar also helps the bolt slide through the wooden mast more easily. Visualise for a moment, if you will, the poor boater swinging back and forth in a sling halfway up the mast and while unintentionally sliding forward on the wooden seat of the bosuns chair as he works. His hands, and indeed his arms, clothing, face and legs, are smeared in white caulking compound and black pine tar. He is struggling to keep from swinging in wide arcs while, with sticky fingers, holding base-plates on opposite sides of the mast, hammering in the bolt and attempting to get the nut started on the thread. The equatorial sky becomes blue with curses and grunts and groans.

With the thick coating of gunk on the back, the bolt is just barely long enough to get the nut started on the top bolt. Finally it goes on and catches the thread. I tighten it down with an adjustable wrench. Caulking compound squeezes out from around the top of the plates. Every attempt to set the lower through-bolt, however, is frustrated. The holes do not line up! Damn and double-damn. I struggle and curse and strain and burst until I finally come to the realization that, although I had given Meastro Quanqui the old plates as models, something is not working out. I use a long screwdriver to help hammer out the two bolts again (thereby also messing up the threads which have to be filed clean before making another attempt), drop them into the bucket and then pry the sticky plates one at a time slowly and messily off the mast. Everything is sent below in the pail. Exhausted, I beg Bill to lower me to the deck as well.

Clearly the bolt-holes are misaligned. It should not be too big a deal to expand the one hole into a slot and reinstall everything. But it means more running around and another go up the mast. I am pooped and, until I get my strength back, I am discouraged. Bill and Kathleen are encouraging. “It will all be much easier the next time. You will know how to do it and where the problems are.” I pray they are right.

A day later I am back up there. I had taken one of the spreader base-plates to a little machine shop near the anchorage the day before. The elderly Ecuadorian man drilled another hole and then chiselled and filed the two holes into a slot. Since the newly exposed metal is not galvanised, I paint that part with metal primer, applying a new coat of bedding compound to the back when the paint is dry. At the spreader level, the bolts now line up. “Alleluia!”, sage ich. I first dip the threads in pine tar and insert the bolts. I then paint the shaft with tar. Slip, slop! In they go as if eager to be back home. With both nuts set over the protruding threads, threads that are well covered in pine tar and bedding compound (that should mean that they can be loosened at some hopefully remote time in the future), I tighten them with the crescent wrench. The bedding compound squishes out again but this time I tidy up with a popsicle stick. Very professional looking, if I say it myself. I might not get an ‘A’ for ‘workmanship’, but I am satisfied with my progress and a little proud that things are coming together. Exhausted again, I am returned to the deck.

A day later, yesterday, Bill pulls me back up, this time to the very top of the mast. Since we use the mainsail halyard for the four-part purchase (bosuns chair), and since this halyard goes over the large sheave set inside the top of the mast, it is difficult to get right up to the masthead. Any work at the top is done therefore at arms length. Reaching the antenna, wind indicator and masthead light situated right on top is impossible without some place to stand or with mountain-climbing gear. Had I been up the mast more frequently in the past, I am sure that I should by now have installed mast steps! Drat!

But I get to work cutting the mousing wire (thin and malleable seizing wire used to make sure that the bolt does not vibrate itself out of the shackle. The shackles connect the shrouds and stays to the masthead tangs. Since, at the angle I am working at ensures that I cannot get pliers up there to unwind the wire, I have a hacksaw sent up and in a couple of strokes each, I free up the shackles. Whatever was used as ‘never-seize’ works wonderfully. It is awkward to reach them but the bolts turn relatively easily after, what?, twenty years in place. Thank goodness!

Before unbolting the shackle I hook the jib halyard to the top end of the upper shroud each time so that it will not drop uncontrolled to the deck or into the water, perhaps also smacking me hard as it falls. With the shackle now unbolted it is easy for Bill to let the first shroud down and lay it out on the deck. I get to work on the backstay. It is still attached to the turnbuckle on the boomkin astern. Its weight therefore means I cannot take enough pressure off the shackle bolt to free it up. Bill installs the topping lift to act as a surrogate backstay and then takes the backstay off the stern turnbuckle. Hanging straight down it becomes possible to loosen the shackle bolt and lower everything away.

By this time I am shaking with exhaustion again. Two hours seems to be my maximum up here. In fact, between removing the first shroud and the backstay, I have had Bill lower me as far as the spreader base-plates where I can reposition myself more comfortably in the busons chair, have a little rest and a stretch. My back and arms are killing me! I want to get the last upper shroud and, if I can, the jibstay as well. But I do not have the strength any more and I insist I be lowered to the deck. Maybe later in the day. But for the moment, I am played out.

Bill pulls out his own climbing tackle and is up the mast like a monkey, pulling himself up and walking up the mast in his bare feet. Makes it look real easy! He works up there for a while and we finally get the port upper shroud down to the deck. He does not think we should take off the jibstay without having a surrogate. So we declare the climbing over for the day and down he comes.

At deck level I inspect the thimbles on the ends of the shrouds. They are rusty and crummy looking but otherwise all right. The twine used for serving
the cable is still in very good condition even the part that did not get slushed when the rest of the standing rigging was done in Comox back in 2002. Victor should be able to dress this stuff up easily. The portion of the upper shrouds that reaches from the spreaders to the masthead is bare wire and looks rusty but strong enough. In the one 8-inch section where the twine was frayed bare from the fence when we were up on the makeshift grid, I see that the galvanized steel wire has not actually been parceled, i.e. small strings laid in the grooves of the wire before the serving is done (i.e. wrapping with twine). On the other hand, the wire appears to have been coated with tar before being served so the wire looks bright and new where it has been scraped clean.

By mid-afternoon I am feeling better again and I impose upon Carlos and Raimondo from Puerto Amistad to transport the cables down to the yacht club in the panga. Victor gets right to work on them. I also take a ball of twine down to the Club and re-wrap the exposed portion, instructing Victor to make sure that that section gets lots of paint.

I have recovered my strength and am rather wishing I had taken the time to get the jibstay off and over to Victor for slushing. Nevertheless, it has been a good days work. The really good news is that our mast is stayed once again and no longer emits groaning noises in the mast collar when the boat rolls in the waves at tidal slack. Victor promises that the slushing will be finished today. Perhaps tomorrow I can set the spreaders, get the upper shrouds reinstalled and the jibstay down to Victor.

Kathleen happily notes that we shall soon have completed all the repairs that we have set out to accomplish since arriving from Mexico:

à A new windvane-steering tab (plus a spare) waiting to be installed;
à New spreaders (plus spares) and new spreader plates;
à A thorough re-slushing of the standing rigging;
à The bottom painted with anti-fouling paint;
à Freshly painted topsides;
à A new bobstay installed; and
à The dinghy totally repainted and chafe protection installed along the gunnels.

There are in fact, however, several items still to be completed before we can set sail for French Polynesia in the spring of 2007.

SHOULD DO’S
à Paint inside of cabin and improve appearance of cabinetry (it looks tired and needs sprucing up. I wish I could speak with Joe May who built the inside of the cabin and ask him what he would recommend.)
à Touch up paint amidships on the port topsides that was scuffed when we were leaning against the wall.

MUST DO’S
à Replace all the old galvanised shackles with quality new ones (cannot yet find good quality ones here in Ecuador). I am using the old shackles as an expediency till we return in the Spring;
à Install two new chain boomkin shrouds;
à Sew new hanks on the head sails;
à Go over the sails and reinforce any weak spots;
à Get a new jibstay cover made (Linda of S/V Dreamer Maker will make one if we can get the Sunbrella somewhere);
à Dig out and repair the rot spots at the mast head.
and replace boomkin shrouds astern.

Yes, ROT! While I was working at the masthead yesterday I noticed wood rot under the metal strap of the masthead corona. Imagine a helmet over the mast head unto which are welded tangs for the upper shrouds, the jibstay and backstay. The VHF antenna, the masthead light and various other items are attached to this helmet. The helmet has two chinstraps pointing down the side of the mast from the helmet and a large bolt goes through the chinstraps to hold everything in place over the mast. Under one of the chinstraps where there is a wooden spacer, I found rot under the white paint. It extends to the mast itself right next to the chinstrap.

Since I was nearly the end of my strength and needed to get the upper shrouds off, I did not take the time yesterday to examine the full extent of rot. From superficial observation, it does not seem that extensive. But, the old saying is that, where there is a little rot, there is probably a lot of rot. I mentally kick myself for not getting up that mast more frequently and spotting this much earlier.

Bill and I discuss how to treat it. He looked at it while he was up there and does not think it is serious. “Just soak it with Kuprinol (.e. copper nitrate solution) and leave it,” he says. But, I want to sleep anights. So I shall probably get up there again soon, dig out the rot so I can see the full extent of it, treat it with Kuprinol and then, when it has dried, pack it with epoxy putty or a wooden scarf and epoxy. Unless the rot is very extensive, it is situated so that it does not, as far as I can see, impact the actual integrity of the mast. When I get to New Zealand I shall pull the ‘helmet’ off the masthead and get a new one made out of galvanised steel (the old one used the same soft-metal water-pipe material that was used for the spreader baseplates; the sun seems to make it tired.), inspecting the wood underneath and treating it as necessary. When we finally get that done, we shall in the end have a rigging system ready for the next thirty or forty years!