Turn That Thing Down

I’m putting the hardware back on Madsu’s spars after stripping and painting them. I’m super impressed with the results. The mast and boom are now a crisp and clean white -

Here’s a shot of the wiring just above the spreaders where it exits for the steaming light. The new conduit works like a charm. The duplex on the right continues up to the masthead for the anchor light.

Madsu Upgrades Slide Show

After taking a lot of bits and pieces apart, I’m finally reassembling Madsu and we’re just days away from getting her back in the water for the summer.

In celebration, I put together this little slide show.

• Use the + and - buttons to go forward or back, or jump using the thumbnail images
• Your keyboard page forward and page back buttons will also work
• Mouse over the image to see if I’d added any notes…

Masthead Good to Go

Another crappy weather day, so no painting today, but I did work inside on bits and pieces of Madsu’s gear.

The masthead is done and ready to go. Yesterday I discovered that the new sheaves I got to replace the old wire sheaves didn’t actually fit.

I spent a bit of quality time with my Makita sander and the aluminum plate that acts as a spacer between the port and starboard pair of sheaves.

In the photo you can see the aft pair of sheaves - and the arrow points to the spacer that runs fore and aft and keeps the starboard side sheaves apart from the port side.

I didn’t want to sand too much since the sheaves just run free - there’s no bearings - the plastic sheave just runs on the pin - so I don’t want too much play in there.

The fit is perfect now - amazing what a little sandpaper on aluminum can do

With a new spin crane, a ridiculously expensive block for the spinnaker halyard, new anchor light post, Windex, and new sheaves for the all line halyards, Madsu’s sad little masthead has been transformed.

To keep me inspired while I’m working on this stuff, I’m reading There By No Dragons: How to Cross a Big Ocean in a Small Sailboat by Reese Palley.

(if you’re wondering what the hell that thing is sticking out of the TOP of the windvane, it’s the new ‘bird spike’ meant to keep freeloaders of the avian variety off the vane).

I should say that we sailed all last summer without the benefit of a masthead Windex. Instead we used Newport shroud telltales which were great, and we’ll keep them on board again this year.

Madsu Masthead

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 !