UNSTEPPING VILISAR’S MAST
Bahia de Caráquez, Ecuador, 10 June 2007
Yesterday was the big day. Avid readers will recall that, just before we had to clear out of Ecuador on our old visa, I discovered a spot of rot at the top of our wooden mast. There was no time to do much except dig out the powdery “wood” that I could get at from the discomfort of a bosuns chair, treat the wound with a wood preservative and hope that things would not get much worse while we were away for six weeks.
The whole time we were in Venezuela I was turning the problem over in my mind and trying to think out how to deal with the problem. Provided the rot was only a local problem, the critical issue was whether the repair work could be done from the bosuns chair, or whether the mast had to be unstepped and the work done on board with the mast stretched out longer than the length of the boat. The alternative was somehow to get the mast ashore. But, unstepping a sailboat mast in a harbour with no crane or haul-out facilities was going to be a challenge.
Fortunately, there are enough experienced cruisers around the anchorage so I could exchange ideas with them and get some help with my repair problems. Chris and Lynn live aboard the South African S/V Malaika. Chris, in fact, is a rigger by trade and recently spent three or four years working in Panama. “No problem!” he says, “we can pull the stick using two sailboats!” Another experienced sailor is Carl, a German living with his wife Alexandra and his two pre-schoolers, Jan and Noah, aboard S/V Muk Tuk (an Innuit word meaning, I think, “Pull-your-mast-at-any-time”). After examining the top of the mast he was insistent that we pull the mast and work on it after it was laid out. “I can do it from a bosun’s chair but the work is not going to be as good and will take longer. Let’s just pull it out. I don’t believe in thinking about things too long. Just do it!
So yesterday was the big day. Vilisar’s crew has a rather sleepless night in expectation. Carl arrives soon after breakfast and we start last-minute preparations. The upper shrouds are already off the boat because I had been dressing the galvanised standing rigging at the time I found the rot. So only the four lower shrouds, attached to the mast at spreader height, are still in place as well as the two forestays and the back stay. We decide to disconnect the VHF antenna wire (running up the outside of the mast) and the 12-volt power line leading to the masthead lights right away and knock out the wedges holding the mast steady in the mast collar at deck level just shortly before we move the boats into position. We clear the deck of various unnecessary jerry jugs, swim ladders, etc.
At the appointed hour, about 1030, when the ebb tide is now running quickly at about 3 or 4 knots and the current is holding everyone pointing steadily upstream, we start the Lister diesel and pull up the anchor. Fortunately I had the anchor chain cleaned a day or so earlier by Carlos and Raimundo, the boat boys at Puerto Amistad: after eight months at anchor the clusters of mussels were as big as a softball and seaweed at made the chain almost too slippery for pulling. The Rio Chone is a very nutrient rich river. The plastic bag protecting marine growth on the propeller was also removed.
We motor slowly forward, Kathleen at the helm. As we come even with Malaika, we pass mooring lines back and forth, securing the two boats from moving with the masts roughly at the same level. We do not put out an anchor. Every fender we can muster on our three boats has been fitted on one side or the other. Then Muk Tuk moves ahead of us, puts out an anchor and drops back so his mast is also even with ours. We secure all the boats with mooring and spring lines.
By 1100 we are all in position. Chris quickly slips heavy-duty web straps around our mast and attaches the mainsail halyards from Muk Tuk and his Malaika. As Lynn and Alexandra take up the tension, the straps slide up the mast until they catch on the spreader plates (the spreaders were removed for repair last year). Once steady, we quickly loosen the shroud and stay turnbuckles at deck level, and Chris orders the ladies on their respective boats to start winching away. The mast starts to lift out through the hole in the deck while it gently touches the side of the mast hole. My son William is holding the loose galvanised rigging bits hanging from the mast so that they do not flail around and hurt someone. While Chris supervises, Carl and his father-in-law, Erik, guide the loose base of the mast. Once the mast is clear of the hole, the winchers slacken off and as the mast starts to lower again. The masthead is now pointing to the bowsprit and the base is being guided carefully back towards the boom gallows just aft of the cockpit. By 1140 the mast is stretched out on the deck and secured by various lines from falling overboard.
At this point, we start our engine again, loosen off all lines and permit Vilisar to drift back on the current until free of the other boats. Feeling quite smug, we motor off downstream through the anchorage. Those yachties out in their dinghies or on deck give us a wave. A few minutes later we are approaching the low floating dock at the Bahia Yacht Club. It is here that we plan to take the mast ashore, stretch it out and do the repairs. Even after more than eight months without practice, Kathleen makes a perfect landing and William and I scramble ashore to secure Vilisar to the dock.
A quick look around finds Victor and Geovanny, the bosuns at the Club de Yate. Victor scoots over to the town square just opposite and comes back with six guys, mostly older fishermen who spend a lot of time these days drinking aguacaliente (literally “hot water”, i.e., homemade, clear schnapps distilled from sugar cane (caña). Schnapps or no schnapps, they have the mast off the boat in a flash, up the ramp and laid out on burros (saw horses) in the yard. They start right in helping to strip off halyards, VHF wires, mast boot, etc. (Victor suggests giving them $20 so they can celebrate. Although, for Ecuador this seems pretty steep, I do it. They guys are so happy they keep pouring shots of aguacaliente for us all! After four or five I have fortunately have enough fortitude to refuse politely any more. The camaraderie is intense. Now we are even greeted on the streets by these fishermen.) I must find out where they make that stuff. It’s probably “contrabando” but it tastes better than the cheapo rum I’ve been drinking.
William shows me the Canadian silver dollar that he found at the bottom of the mast. Sailors are superstitious: a silver dollar under the mast is supposed to bring good luck. This one is a 1973 commemorative issue for the centenary of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_silver_dollar). Since Vilisar was completed in 1973 or 1974, I guess it was the original builder, George Friend of Sidney, B.C., who placed the silver dollar under the original mast, and that Joe May, who rebuilt the rig in the 1980’s when he owned the yacht, placed the same Canadian silver dollar back under his new mast. It will go back again when we re-step Vilisar’s mast.
Soon the yacht-club yard empties. I am exhausted even though I have by no means done most of the heavy work. That honour goes to Carl, Erik and Chris as well as the guys at the yacht club. I drift back to Vilisar, still tied to the dock, and start clearing up the deck. The shrouds and stays are all higgledy-piggledy and I lay them out in a long arch from the cockpit to the bow. Dozens of ropes and lines need recoiling and laying out. Bits and pieces of rigging, VHF radio mast, masthead lights, etc. are everywhere and need to be gathered up so we can refit them when it comes time in a few weeks to re-step the mast in the same process. By that time, we devoutly hope, the repairs will have been completed and the mast coated with lots of layers of Cetol.
Back up in the yard, Carl and Erik have been getting the metal corona off the mast head and digging away at the wood to assess how much rot is actually there. The good news is that the corona, made from a water pipe with various tangs, and a top, etc. welded on is in excellent condition. Erik is a metallurgist. He says, that even if we made a new one, it would not be any better than this one and the galvanising on the surface is still in good nick. This is indeed good news since, after the metal failure of the spreader plates coming from The Gelapagos last year, I was certain I would have to have the masthead corona re-fabricated locally too.
The moderately bad news is that the rot is quite extensive right at the top of the mast, the part that was covered by the corona. It might in fact be rather more extensive than that. But Carl, who is going to do the work, is going to start probing on Monday. The remainder of the mast looks pretty good but, as the old adage goes, where there is rot, there is usually a lot more than meets the eye. We are lucky we found it now! If in a storm at sea the corona had ripped off a rotten masthead, we would have been a devil of a situation with the whole rig itself down around our ears followed shortly by the mast itself as it broke off. Stay tuned to get the full extent of the good and bad news.
We spent the night at the dock, bouncing rather more than usual without the counterweight of the mast to slow the rolling. Still, it was rather nice to be able to step off the boat and be right in the centre of the town. We all took a dip in the club’s swimming pool and then headed out to find the Mexican restaurant that Steve Sawchyn and Anna Bird had told us about. Great tip! It was not as good as in Mexico. But it was definitely Mexican and more interesting than the normally bland Ecuadorian fare.
Bahia de Caráquez, Ecuador, 10 June 2007
Yesterday was the big day. Avid readers will recall that, just before we had to clear out of Ecuador on our old visa, I discovered a spot of rot at the top of our wooden mast. There was no time to do much except dig out the powdery “wood” that I could get at from the discomfort of a bosuns chair, treat the wound with a wood preservative and hope that things would not get much worse while we were away for six weeks.
The whole time we were in Venezuela I was turning the problem over in my mind and trying to think out how to deal with the problem. Provided the rot was only a local problem, the critical issue was whether the repair work could be done from the bosuns chair, or whether the mast had to be unstepped and the work done on board with the mast stretched out longer than the length of the boat. The alternative was somehow to get the mast ashore. But, unstepping a sailboat mast in a harbour with no crane or haul-out facilities was going to be a challenge.
Fortunately, there are enough experienced cruisers around the anchorage so I could exchange ideas with them and get some help with my repair problems. Chris and Lynn live aboard the South African S/V Malaika. Chris, in fact, is a rigger by trade and recently spent three or four years working in Panama. “No problem!” he says, “we can pull the stick using two sailboats!” Another experienced sailor is Carl, a German living with his wife Alexandra and his two pre-schoolers, Jan and Noah, aboard S/V Muk Tuk (an Innuit word meaning, I think, “Pull-your-mast-at-any-time”). After examining the top of the mast he was insistent that we pull the mast and work on it after it was laid out. “I can do it from a bosun’s chair but the work is not going to be as good and will take longer. Let’s just pull it out. I don’t believe in thinking about things too long. Just do it!
So yesterday was the big day. Vilisar’s crew has a rather sleepless night in expectation. Carl arrives soon after breakfast and we start last-minute preparations. The upper shrouds are already off the boat because I had been dressing the galvanised standing rigging at the time I found the rot. So only the four lower shrouds, attached to the mast at spreader height, are still in place as well as the two forestays and the back stay. We decide to disconnect the VHF antenna wire (running up the outside of the mast) and the 12-volt power line leading to the masthead lights right away and knock out the wedges holding the mast steady in the mast collar at deck level just shortly before we move the boats into position. We clear the deck of various unnecessary jerry jugs, swim ladders, etc.
At the appointed hour, about 1030, when the ebb tide is now running quickly at about 3 or 4 knots and the current is holding everyone pointing steadily upstream, we start the Lister diesel and pull up the anchor. Fortunately I had the anchor chain cleaned a day or so earlier by Carlos and Raimundo, the boat boys at Puerto Amistad: after eight months at anchor the clusters of mussels were as big as a softball and seaweed at made the chain almost too slippery for pulling. The Rio Chone is a very nutrient rich river. The plastic bag protecting marine growth on the propeller was also removed.
We motor slowly forward, Kathleen at the helm. As we come even with Malaika, we pass mooring lines back and forth, securing the two boats from moving with the masts roughly at the same level. We do not put out an anchor. Every fender we can muster on our three boats has been fitted on one side or the other. Then Muk Tuk moves ahead of us, puts out an anchor and drops back so his mast is also even with ours. We secure all the boats with mooring and spring lines.
By 1100 we are all in position. Chris quickly slips heavy-duty web straps around our mast and attaches the mainsail halyards from Muk Tuk and his Malaika. As Lynn and Alexandra take up the tension, the straps slide up the mast until they catch on the spreader plates (the spreaders were removed for repair last year). Once steady, we quickly loosen the shroud and stay turnbuckles at deck level, and Chris orders the ladies on their respective boats to start winching away. The mast starts to lift out through the hole in the deck while it gently touches the side of the mast hole. My son William is holding the loose galvanised rigging bits hanging from the mast so that they do not flail around and hurt someone. While Chris supervises, Carl and his father-in-law, Erik, guide the loose base of the mast. Once the mast is clear of the hole, the winchers slacken off and as the mast starts to lower again. The masthead is now pointing to the bowsprit and the base is being guided carefully back towards the boom gallows just aft of the cockpit. By 1140 the mast is stretched out on the deck and secured by various lines from falling overboard.
At this point, we start our engine again, loosen off all lines and permit Vilisar to drift back on the current until free of the other boats. Feeling quite smug, we motor off downstream through the anchorage. Those yachties out in their dinghies or on deck give us a wave. A few minutes later we are approaching the low floating dock at the Bahia Yacht Club. It is here that we plan to take the mast ashore, stretch it out and do the repairs. Even after more than eight months without practice, Kathleen makes a perfect landing and William and I scramble ashore to secure Vilisar to the dock.
A quick look around finds Victor and Geovanny, the bosuns at the Club de Yate. Victor scoots over to the town square just opposite and comes back with six guys, mostly older fishermen who spend a lot of time these days drinking aguacaliente (literally “hot water”, i.e., homemade, clear schnapps distilled from sugar cane (caña). Schnapps or no schnapps, they have the mast off the boat in a flash, up the ramp and laid out on burros (saw horses) in the yard. They start right in helping to strip off halyards, VHF wires, mast boot, etc. (Victor suggests giving them $20 so they can celebrate. Although, for Ecuador this seems pretty steep, I do it. They guys are so happy they keep pouring shots of aguacaliente for us all! After four or five I have fortunately have enough fortitude to refuse politely any more. The camaraderie is intense. Now we are even greeted on the streets by these fishermen.) I must find out where they make that stuff. It’s probably “contrabando” but it tastes better than the cheapo rum I’ve been drinking.
William shows me the Canadian silver dollar that he found at the bottom of the mast. Sailors are superstitious: a silver dollar under the mast is supposed to bring good luck. This one is a 1973 commemorative issue for the centenary of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_silver_dollar). Since Vilisar was completed in 1973 or 1974, I guess it was the original builder, George Friend of Sidney, B.C., who placed the silver dollar under the original mast, and that Joe May, who rebuilt the rig in the 1980’s when he owned the yacht, placed the same Canadian silver dollar back under his new mast. It will go back again when we re-step Vilisar’s mast.
Soon the yacht-club yard empties. I am exhausted even though I have by no means done most of the heavy work. That honour goes to Carl, Erik and Chris as well as the guys at the yacht club. I drift back to Vilisar, still tied to the dock, and start clearing up the deck. The shrouds and stays are all higgledy-piggledy and I lay them out in a long arch from the cockpit to the bow. Dozens of ropes and lines need recoiling and laying out. Bits and pieces of rigging, VHF radio mast, masthead lights, etc. are everywhere and need to be gathered up so we can refit them when it comes time in a few weeks to re-step the mast in the same process. By that time, we devoutly hope, the repairs will have been completed and the mast coated with lots of layers of Cetol.
Back up in the yard, Carl and Erik have been getting the metal corona off the mast head and digging away at the wood to assess how much rot is actually there. The good news is that the corona, made from a water pipe with various tangs, and a top, etc. welded on is in excellent condition. Erik is a metallurgist. He says, that even if we made a new one, it would not be any better than this one and the galvanising on the surface is still in good nick. This is indeed good news since, after the metal failure of the spreader plates coming from The Gelapagos last year, I was certain I would have to have the masthead corona re-fabricated locally too.
The moderately bad news is that the rot is quite extensive right at the top of the mast, the part that was covered by the corona. It might in fact be rather more extensive than that. But Carl, who is going to do the work, is going to start probing on Monday. The remainder of the mast looks pretty good but, as the old adage goes, where there is rot, there is usually a lot more than meets the eye. We are lucky we found it now! If in a storm at sea the corona had ripped off a rotten masthead, we would have been a devil of a situation with the whole rig itself down around our ears followed shortly by the mast itself as it broke off. Stay tuned to get the full extent of the good and bad news.
We spent the night at the dock, bouncing rather more than usual without the counterweight of the mast to slow the rolling. Still, it was rather nice to be able to step off the boat and be right in the centre of the town. We all took a dip in the club’s swimming pool and then headed out to find the Mexican restaurant that Steve Sawchyn and Anna Bird had told us about. Great tip! It was not as good as in Mexico. But it was definitely Mexican and more interesting than the normally bland Ecuadorian fare.
posted by rjb @ Wednesday, June 13, 2007
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