A lot of rain kept me from getting top coat on Madsu’s spars today. So I turned my attention to the masthead, where I’m adding an anchor light and a windvane.

Since I was installing a post for the light, which means tapping 2 holes in the mast head, I figured there must be a way to use the same machine screws to attach a bracket of some sort on which I’ll mount the shaft of the windvane. I had ordered a ‘special’ bracket from Catalina Direct that uses the upper shroud tang, but like a few things I’ve ordered, it doesn’t actually fit the hardware on my mast. When a boat’s 30 years old, who knows what kind of mods have been one to the rig, so it’s not a huge surprise, but a little disappointing since I can’t return it ;-(

After cutting a short length of aluminum plate, I bent it into a bracket using a vice and a ballpeen hammer – low tech but it worked out ok. It’s too long but I’ll cut and soften up the edges now that I know it’s all going to fit together.

I’ll drop in 4 new sheaves for the main and jib halyards as soon as I shave down the spacing plate (the new sheaves from Catalina Direct are a bit too wide – easy fix if I trim the spacer a bit), I’m switching to all-line from line/wire. And of course, the new spin crane looks very inviting !