June 22, 2011-Painting the Mast

wingssail images-fredrick roswold
Judy Sanding

We previously painted Wings’ mast eighteen years ago at Seaview East Boatyard in Seattle. We sanded it four times back then; once at the beginning and then, due to our poor painting skills, three more times as the Sterling LPU paint had to be sanded off and reapplied to get a smooth finish. Now, in Zululand Yacht Club, in South Africa, we are back at work on the mast sanding and painting.

It seems like the old days: here we are sanding the mast again, and, again, we have to re-sand the finish coat to get it smooth.

This time we blame the weather. Right in the middle of the final spraying the wind came up and made the spraying quite difficult. Andrew, our painter, did the best he could but the finish was not perfect.

We’ve decided to hand sand it smooth, using 1000 and 1500 grit wet and dry paper, and then to polish it with fine cutting past.

We don’t mind this, we’ve done it before.

Click here for more photos.

Other mast work in progress:

Patrick described the work we have to do as similar to “an aircraft maintenance check, dismantling, cleaning, inspection, appraisal, replacement, painting and reassembling”.

We agree with him and we are well underway following that pattern; now we are doing the replacements and painting. In addition to painting we have:

-All corrosion has been sanded, brushed, and acid cleaned
-The mast head sheave guard has been re-welded.
-The boom has had some welding to fix cracks where it attaches to the gooseneck
-New bearings for the mast-head sheaves have arrived and will be installed today.
-New windex and mast head light have been received and are ready for installation.
-Most of the fasteners have been replaced
-The rigging screws have been cleaned, polished, and re-lubricated
-The mast step has been removed and will be rebuilt due to corrosion found on the underside.
-A new hydraulic boom vang has been ordered.

And (unrelated) one of the keel backing plates (the one under the mast step) has been removed and a replacement is being fabricated.

By tomorrow we start the reassembly. If all goes well the mast could be back on the boat in a week.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, South Africa