Kai O'hana
07/17/07 - Stepping the Masts
-A word from Captain Bach
After the spars, the stainless pieces and the wire rope were all assembled according to plan, and Chad filled the mast chases with electrical wire and connected all their respective ends to the various components on the tops, the moment of truth had arrived. It was time to put the completed rig on the boat.
We woke up early on the morning of the lift to swing the boat along side the seawall (we are normally stern to) only to find out that we should have done it the evening before when it was high tide – we were hard on the bottom (this is one rare instant when I apparently should have listened to the Seawall Superintendents when they told me I’d better be careful, “Your boat’ll grow roots if you stay in the lagoon too long”). Certainly an inauspicious beginning to such a landmark day, but the tide was rising and the roots let us free enough so that by the time the “yardbirds” arrived with the crane we were ready to roll.
Though it was an anxious time for us, the yardbirds handled it in their typical Caribbean laidback style, “No worries, mon”. After all, this was probably only their one-thousandth mast they dropped in a boat (metaphorically speaking). We had learned early on that the best way to deal with these fellas is to do it their way – slow and steady.
During the time we had lived in the yard, we had witnessed with a chuckle numerous occasions where anxious Americans and/or Europeans would run around flailing their arms, barking out orders and instructions to the guys that might have been appropriate behavior in New York or Paris, but here, all it got them was the yardbirds calmly searching for a comfortable place to lie down in the shade and wait without a word until these boat owners calmed down. Unless I intervened and explained to these frustrated triple A-types what was going on, their general response to the catatonic yardbirds was to storm over to the owner/manager’s office and continue the tirade, of which they would literally be consoled with an exuberant, “F&%K OFF AND GET OUT OF MY OFFICE!” Apparently JC missed the “How to Properly Deal with Your Clients” portion of his business education. He proved to be one of the most difficult people I’ve ever had to deal with on a “professional” level.
So I shelved my Type A personality for the day and got into the this-could-take-a-long-time-but-its-all-OK mode (something I don’t naturally do). We started with some sage advice from them on how they saw the day working out, which was in line with my thinking, and we started strapping the easy one (the mizzenmast) first for practice.
I couldn’t believe how smoothly it went – up she went, swung over the boat, then came back down, everyone stationed in various places coaxing her through the settee roof, the helm, the salon roof, the salon floor and then straight into the tabernacle. Everyone stood around waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never did, so we all went about the task of affixing the lanyards to two of the fore shrouds and two of the aft shrouds while the yardbirds went to lunch. By the time they got back, we had stabilized the mast and sent Chad up in the boson’s chair to release the strap so we could put it around the main.
The main was a bit more challenging than the mizzen only because the spreaders were so much larger. As the crane slowly eased the mast up, she jolted to one side sending the port spreader sharply toward the ground of which I knew would snap off the second it hit, so I dove under the mast and shouldered the spreader. Big mistake! I weigh just under 200 pounds, and the mast weighs just under 2,000. The falling spreader drilled me to all fours taking with it a considerable slab of skin between my neck and shoulder, then without even hitting the ground, the spreader and the mast slowly lifted into the air.
I ran to the base of the mast and watched it rise from that vantage point. I had a dream the night before that the mast broke in half as the top was being lifted off the stands. My father always told me he never slept the night before a concrete pour; well I guess my sleepless nights occur just before mast stepping days – I’ll try and remember not to make it a habit of having too many of these. Regardless, the mast hardly flexed at all, certainly much less than it would have if it had been a shaped tree. I was pleased and relieved.
As with the mizzen, the main went up, swung over the boat, came down through the coach roof, through the girls cabin floor and into the tabernacle without even a breath of a problem. The only glitch was “user error”: Lauren forgot to put a coin into the tabernacle before the mast was set. As a sailor, I’m woefully lacking in superstition (something, I’ve been told, I’ll definitely have to work on), so I was a little put out by having to stop the crane while she ran around looking for an adequate coin to put under the mast. I believe I’ve read somewhere that the tradition came about eons ago to put a copper coin in the tabernacle to “poison” any water that might enter it thus preventing rot at the base of the mast. Well being a modern boat “renovator” (as opposed to “restorer”), I rely on epoxy to prevent rot, not copper coins, but avast with logic, “find the damn coin and let’s drop the mast!”
And as with the mizzen mast, all we had to do was set the two aft shrouds and one of three stays to secure the pole, send Alexis up in the boson’s chair this time to release the strap, to send the yardbirds and the crane on their merry way before they knocked off at 3:30pm. Their day might have been over, but our work was just beginning. It was forecast to “blow a hoolie” that night so we had to make sure to get all the necessary wire ropes on to secure the masts. Chad being the ship’s acrobat as well as the engineer (and apparently not afraid of heights) went up in the boson’s chair to set everything that couldn’t be set from below, while Preston and I did some acrobatics ourselves on a ladder in the dinghy to set the bobstay and the other two stays on the end of the bowsprit.
By the time the clouds were building over the hills beyond Marigot, we had every shroud, stay and triadic set, shackled and moused. We could sleep in relative peace. Of thirty-five lines in total, three were either mis-measured, numbers were inverted, or I just plain ol’ screwed up. Of course, those would have to be fixed eventually. Regardless, I’ll take those odds any day, whether in school, business or life – let’s just hope those kinds of numbers work on a boat as well.
