Hard season

Staying on hard

Winter was long and mostly cold. There was a periods, when temperature rise over zero and even to +10 degree in Celsius, but that was only few times. Unfortunately, these warm periods was bad for my boat.

During warm time, snow is melting, and then coming down from roof. This winter, we had more snow than in a long time, so this time, when snow start to melt, it came with a great force down and hit my boat cover.

This made a bad damage to the sailboat deck and bulwark.

Only thing, what during winter could be done, was keep the cover clean of snow.

Spring on hard

The season could not start as early as usually, because of global lock down, covid 19 restrictions and because of other related issues. So frustrating, have to say.

Finally, i made my way to the boat at May. With mind and heart full of stress, i went to boat to meet her after long time. I was surprised, how good shape and condition she was, even she got hit by great load of snow from the roof. She was also completely dry.

I did spend a hours to try to discover, what kind of issues i was going to have during spring and before to sea set her. Lot of extra time to work on the deck, for sure. Mast was also get worse, it had to be repair before it could be used for rigging and sailing.

Wooden mast

Wooden mast need to be taking care as all parts usually need in boat. If you let time to go too far away from small “fixing window”, you will ending in to big repairing season.

Sanding is a big work, and i made a few small tests to find out right tools to work with.

Before full sanding and surface repairing, most of rigging parts had to be take off and fill holes with wooden pins

Removing rigging parts is not difficult, but to put all back in same place and same way, can be more or less easy.

All parts that was making sanding difficult or impossible, had to be move away and then fill holes with wooden pins.

This project was going to take a lot of more time, that i was calculated. Damn. Not good.

Top of mast

Top of mast needed a little more heavy tool, than i expected, but after some few smooth moves, top of the mast was loose.

After moving the top of mast, the real issue could be found. Repair depth was considerable. In beginning of season, i was more positive with the time table and with the planned sea set. Plan for sea set was just about midsummer or a bit after that.

Now, this time schedule start to look like less possible, if not impossible.

The mast was wet, so it had to let to get dry. This was going to take a few weeks, if no rain 🙂

Top of the mast needed more than few weeks to get dry. During this time, mast also got its form back and was looking more good. Anyway, mast was not in very good condition.

Mast had to dry even more, because after removing varnish, surface was still wet and ofcourse, the weather did not show its best for this current work. After few extra weeks, i finally could fix top of wooden mast.

Hoping for no rain, no moister and not very hot days.

Sanding the mast

Before i could start to sanding the mast, i had to remove all parts from the surface, that i could remove. Some of items was very tight in place and some of them was easy to remove.

Finally i could start sanding. Mast was very wet under varnish, so drying did take a good time. This moister has been under the surface for a some time, but wood will dry with time. Usually no damage has been found.

Sanding mast was taking a quite long time. Some places was easy, just needed to peal, and varnish was a way. Some places needed to help with knife..

Sanding took a much more time, than was expected. Sea set was postponed at least with a 3 weeks. Not good, but necessary. Too much to do before boat is safe for sailing.

Season on Hard ?