[Rhodes22-list] Re: Mast Step

[Mary Lou Troy]

Somehow the original message never got delivered to either Fred or me 
at the atlanticbb address. Had to go look it up in the archives.

Tom, if all you did was pull out the screws it should be an easy fix 
unless you really could determine that the core was rotted. The most 
common cause of the mast step pulling out is failure to raise the 
pop-top slider before lowering the mast. If you compound that by 
failing to close the sliding hatch you have a nice bit of leverage to 
remove the screws. The mast step should be held just by the wood 
screws so that when you forget to raise the pop-top slider or the 
close the hatch, the only damage done is pulling out the screws. This 
is, of course, the VOE (voice of experience). When we had this 
repair, we just filled the holes with epoxy, let it cure, redrilled 
and put the screws back in. You want to keep the breakaway 
capabilitiy - otherwise you are liable to take away a larger chunk of 
the cabintop the next time you forget to raise the poptop slider.

Best of luck on your repair.

Mary Lou
1991 R22 Fretless
Swan Creek (Rock Hall, MD)


You wrote:

Although, this is nothing like Stan's great adventure, I pulled my boat today
and finally got to try my new GB mast crane!

I went very slow through the procedure as to avoid mistakes. The only problem
came as the mast began on its downward path, the screws that fasten the mast
step to the deck decided to pull out. Fortunately I was able to stop the
motion long enough to secure the base of the mast and the mast step with an
abundance of lines sheeted to almost every securing point on the 
boat. With the base
secured, the rest of the lowering went well.

It appears as though  I will have some moisture (and rotten wood) issues to
deal with this winter. Otherwise, the tow home from Madison to Burlington, IL
went smoothly.

And it's now time for a cold beer (or maybe a little rum and coke 8:D ).

Cheers!

Tom Trenkle


>Tom,
>This could be an easy repair. Do you know the extent of the damage beneath
>the fiberglass? Or did it just rip out the screw from the 
>fiberglass. Sometimes
>  simply filling the holes with epoxy and re drilling will solve the problem.
>As  Ed mentioned, I do have an old article published in Sail magazine on
>repairing  cored decking. Let me know if you need it.
>
>Rummy
>__________________________________________________
>Use Rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org, Help? www.rhodes22.org/list