Seemed like the blink of an eye… Our 45ft mast was removed by a crane on Wednesday, and then it was re-installed the following Wednesday.

This was our last big project and I felt some anxiety and excitement seeing the wood spar lift into the air.

Our rigger Ian Weedman is a good friend who trained with some of best riggers in the world in the Pacific North West. Between working on sailboats in Portland and treehouses in Puget Sound, we finally carved out a few days for him to re-do our standing rigging.

Ian is a real joy to work with! Meticulous, down to earth, accommodating, and exceptional in all regards.  If you need any type of rigging work done (or treehouses, for that matter), message him at iweedman at yahoo dot com. Particularly if you’re in the Santa Barbara area, we’re trying to keep him more local 😉

It WAS hard to throw down $3000 on rigging (the wire that holds up the mast and turnbuckles/chainplates, the hardware that holds it to the boat). Awful expensive just for a regular maintenance item.  But this is essential work needed before a multi-year cruise, especially if the rigging is over 10 years old. Shiny new metal = serious confidence + reliability for 10 more years.

List of things we did to the mast & rig:

• new standing rigging (wires)
• new chainplates
• new turnbuckles & terminals
• new mast steps (the old ones kept getting snagged on the lines!)
• new mount for anchor light on masthead
• repaired a section of rot on the foot of the mast — the drain wasn’t working and water was building up.
• fixed the wire conduits to the radar, flood lights, and anchor lights
• re-connected and re-painted the radar mount
• replaced a few old bolts in the rigging
• varnished the base of mast and boom… looking lovely!

Check out the re-install of the mast here (15sec video) and browse through our Instagram pics.