Sunday, May 29, 2011

Mastless.... is that a real word?


Well, there she sits, sans mast. Pretty funny looking, but we feel right at home here in this marina as there are quite a few other sailboats in the same sad condition.

In the picture below, you can see the footing that holds the mast to the deck of the boat. Inside, you can see some gunk that has built up over the years and is the cause of the cracking in the mast. What happened was the gunk plugged the drain holes just enough to prevent water from seeping out quickly enough and it froze when we had a cold snap this past winter. The weather gods aligned to have the perfect conditions for this to happen. Apparently the mast repairer, Brent, has never seen this happen here, but it is quite common on the east coast. 


You would not believe how many times we have heard that same story..... seems we lack a certain type of force field that other people have for protection against the "I have never seen that happen before" syndrome. Oh, and by the way, Brent said the amount of gunk we had built up was very little, he has seen so much inside the footing it is completely filled.

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