Everything came together all at once for getting the mast back on Reach. We’ve been enjoying our stay in Florida and had anticipated about a month of work for a re-rigging job (always doubling the time, mentally). Adding on new sails and chainplates tossed a few more balls in the air, yet we still managed to get the mast re-stepped only 7 weeks later.
While the mast was off we took the opportunity to inspect the compression post. It is made of schedule 80 aluminum and showed no signs of corrosion.
We would swing by Mack Sails whenever we had access to a car to check on the progress of the sails & mast fittings. The new tangs were built as a solid bar that goes through the mast to connect to toggles on each side. That mast taper weld that had been cracking would not hold a new weld, so they re-enforced that area with an aluminum sleeve and new weld.
New chainplates came back shiny with a mirror finish ~ looks & cost like fine jewelry ~ and we decided to go with raised rather than recessed bolts, which we also had polished (thx Dad!), putting the rest of our stainless steel to shame!
The process was tedious to get these shroud & forestay chainplates in place, although made easier with our handy impact driver.
The new rigging itself was scaled-up in size and strength from 3/8” to 7/16” wire for the shrouds with toggles and turnbuckles up-sized. The diamond stays were kept at 3/8” wire yet converted to tangs and toggles to move completely away from the t-ball fittings. The standard sail plan was re-outfitted to include a new sail track (Tides Marine), mainsail with three reefing points and camber-spar self tacking jib (Challenge, high-modulus material).
The mast was re-stepped on a sunny afternoon. Little-by-little we had a whole boat again…
With new rigging attached, the mast was lowered over the mast step and electronics cables were fed through the compression post into the interior.
The forestay was then attached, followed by the shrouds for rig stabilization and then tuning...
Jib was hanked on and raised with a good fit, as was the mainsail. We did detect an overlap where the jib would hit the deck-lights when tacking, so we’ll add a reinforcing patch there.
After a quick inspection that all was in order, we took Reach out for a test sail. Ahhh, nice to have wind in the sails again!!
