I spent a lot of time on friday working on the mast with Miriam helping me. I have to give her credit for being willing to spend a day out in the grueling sun workin on my mast with me.. It would have taken much longer with out her help.
I put new sheeves in the base of the mast and a new main halyard sheeve in the masthead. The jib halyard, topping lift and spinnaker halyard sheeves looked to be in very good condition so I left them in.
Next was installing the cheek blocks just under the spreaders for the easy jacks, I decided not to use stainless screws threaded into the mast and just go to aluminum pop rivits. It seems to work very well and be very strong. I am hoping that it will be less suceptible to galvanic corrosion of the mast with the aluminum on aluminum.
After the lazy jack cheek blocks I installed the topping lift. I hung a block from the mast head between the backstay and the main halyard.
Then I installed an entrance plate about 24 inches below the cap shrouds on the starboard side of the mast. The exit plate is located between 5 and 6 feet up from deck level on starboard.
(It is scary cutting holes in your mast for entrance and exit plates.. its one of those no second chance things. If you mess up just kiss your “A**” goodbye.. oh sorry I meant “Mast” goodbye)
I’m using 1/4 inch line for the topping lift and it comes down to a block mounted to a u-bolt attached through the deck on the starboard side of the mast. It then leads back through the (6 sheeve harken) deck organizers I installed a couple of months ago with this in mind. It terminates at the aft edge of the cabin top on starboard at a cam cleat.
At this point I went ahead and pulled the new main halyard and topping lift with the old main halyard as I pulled it out. I also ran a leader line for pulling the rg-8x coax for the vhf antenna with them. The only tough part of pulling the new lines was that I had to pull the main halyard and leader up to the exit plate for the topping lift and then fish it out there to attach the 14 inch topping lift line.. Pull it back in the mast and up to the topping lift entrance plate at the top of the mast and pull the topping lift line out there and then finish pulling the main halyard out the top of the mast with the leader line for the coax which I would be installing on saturday with Mike.
The last thing I did before calling it quits for the day was to install the new fram 1/2 wave marine antenna at the mast head. I drilled and rivited the bracket on at the front port starboard side of the mast just under the mast head. It just clears the windex by an inch or so.
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