[Public-List] renewing mainsail track fasteners

Sat Nov 6 07:25:32 PDT 2021

Haha hello Michael…  thanks for the addressing one of my known peccadilloes…. that being dismay at the 360 degree shift in ’normal’ to leaving sticks up, unstepping having become the anomaly.

Stainless steel pop rivets are good; tapping threads in the aluminium your mast and driving in short stainless steel machine screws is best.  

Back to masts…  it’s normal in the past twenty years and more to see forests of masts standing over yachts on the hard… once upon a time that was considered a risky and unseamanlike thing to do.  It’s normal now.  I recall the hilarious editorials WoodenBoat Magazine used to feature in every issue.  David Kasanof’s editorials were always direct hits with regard to what I was worrying about in the particular season the issue of the magazine came out… he did one memorable rant twenty or so years ago addressing the trend toward leaving masts up.   He described it as ’sticking your middle finger up at God and daring him to do something bad about it’.   I wish I’d kept that article.   

It’s funny how attitudes toward things change.  Once upon a time I turned my nose up at aluminium masts, inboard engines, wheel steering, standing headroom down below, roller furling on headstays, fibreglass boats in general.  Now I have all those things and have grown past tolerating them, I sort of like them.  

There are members of our sailing club who have never taken their masts down except for a few signal occasions where they thought the really had to.  There was an ugly scene at our club’s AGM where it was reported by the Haul-out and Launch Director that boats with sticks up were taking longer to lift and position, so were charged an extra levy on the rate.  The howl from some of the membership was loud and immediate.  One person with a Hunter 36 commented ‘I can’t unstep my mast!  It’s dangerous!  It’s over 40’ tall!’   My wife elbowed me hard in the ribs… she didn’t have to, I wouldn’t have made a comment about Hunter’s boats out loud, but she knew what I was thinking.   A few seasons ago we were sailing our dinghy in an anchorage and at one point on our way back to SURPRISE were gliding by a large Hunter with its owner sitting in his cockpit.  He called over ‘looks nice’.  I said thanks.  Then he said ‘I’ll bet you have a lot few problems with that boat than I’m having with mine’.  I blurted out ‘Well you chose a Hunter’.   He was slack jawed and I have to say I was embarrassed at my gaffe; my comment was very rude and uncalled for.    

I didn’t repeat the gaffe at the meeting, I am an officer of the club after all, but I was dismayed that what once was a normal part of yacht ownership… regularly unstepping the mast, inspecting the fittings and throwing it back up again, is now considered by many to be a risky and needless precaution practiced only by fanatics mired in the past (I had that thrown at me once by a fellow who also thought he didn’t need a compass nor charts in his boat because he has a GPS).

Well this is really rambling now… I’m reminded of something my Grandfather Jim Costas said to me when I was little.  He said to me ‘you look at me and see an old man… I’m still 20 inside’.  I didn’t know what he meant, but now that I’ve got grey hair (and am probably older than he was when he said that) I do understand.  I still feel like I’m the same guy who was learning about seamanship when I started doing those crazy sailing/camping trips in Albacores in Northern Georgian Bay… the same guy who bought a wooden Folkboat when he was 23, and learned about looking after her and sailing her… I haven’t forgotten what I learned, and am sometimes dismayed at how what were once universally valued important lessons and marks of seamanship, are now by some considered ‘old fashioned’ and ’not really important’ and worse ‘weird’.   Hurrumph.

I guess I’m grumpy because the Misery Trip this year was a complete bust.  Realizing that I had to come ashore earlier than normal, October 27, I stole a Wednesday/Thursday the week before so as to get that last overnighter in.  What’s the use of owning ones own business if one doesn’t abuse the ability to disappear once in a while.   So on the Wednesday I did a long zoom meeting with a boatyard client, wrote up the resulting order and rushed around stuffing a few things in a duffel, kissed Caroline bye and jumped into the car to shoot over to the boat.  I ate lunch in the cockpit then cast off and headed up the coast for Frying Pan Harbour.  Frying Pan is normally uninhabitable in the summer these days because of large motorboats, music, diesel generators and jet skis. but in the fall it’s quiet again and that Wednesday absolutely quiet and lonely.  

That would have been perfect for the Misery Trip but for the weather.  It was perfectly still.  Glassy calm. I motored at 6.2 knots all the way up there.  It was warm, and glassy calm all night.  Looking down at the stars reflected on the water was seeing them with the same clarity as looking up at the sky.  The morning was cloudless and still… I motored home at 6.2 with the engine purring quietly and not a ripple on the water from either wind nor stink potter.  

That was it… not really a Misery Trip.  A complete bust.  And now the boat’s out of the water and I’m waiting for April to chuck her back in again.

Gordon Laco
426 Surprise

> On Nov 6, 2021, at 9:51 AM, Michael via Public-List <public-list at lists.alberg30.org> wrote:
> 
> I did not see this on the maintenance page, but I think it has been covered here in the past, and of course, I have forgotten what the consensus was.
> I have had several failures over the years of the pop rivets holding the sail track on the mast-my track is the what looks like some kind of copper alloy-not that that makes a difference in my problem (I think). This is a year that I pull the mast, and my intention is to fix it right and fix it once. So, 1. oval head sheer metal screws? 2. Aluminum pop rivets? 3. SS pop rivets-or something harder than aluminum (if such a thing exists)?
> I do not pull the boat out of water all that often, and pull the mast even less-apologies to Gordon. On the other hand, the Epiphanes paint job I did last winter on the Center Console turned out great-I'm doing the real boat this season-Thanks Gordon.
> 
> Michael Grosh
> #220
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