OB’s new mast

Not the best weekend for working outside with 50 plus knots of wind hurling about the garden but work on the mast progressed significantly, even if I did lose a ream of sandpaper to various marauding mini tornados. OB spent the morning bucking about on her trolley and I was just moving her to a safer spot when roof tiles lifted off a nearby building with all the ease and grace of dandelion seeds, crashing to the ground and exploding into pieces like, er, well, just like roof tiles... It looked like nowhere would be safe but eventually I tied her to the hedge and got down to some serious graft on the mast.


The original mast broke back in August and for a while it seemed OB would remain a rig-less rowing boat indefinitely. However, the hungry sailing bug must be fed. I have made the mast in a similar way to the previous one—with a round section where the mast passes through the deck, a square piece where the boom and halyard cleat attach which leads into a not-entirely-round upper section that becomes more circular as it tapers. I had intended to do a how-to, or rather a muddle through-to, with text and pictures but I muddled through with such fixed determination that I didn’t look up from the work until it was complete.

This mast is more robust having a diameter of 5.5cm compared with the other’s 4.7cm but it is of Mr M’s standard knotty pine. Rather than take any risks, (the last mast broke on a knot of deadwood) I have drilled out the knots and filled the holes with epoxy.
A few other jobs to be dealt with now that the Workshop is out of the cupboard; the rudder yoke and blade both need finishing and there are a few bumps and bruises on the daggerboard and around the boat in general that could do with some epoxy.

But now when I lie awake listening to that shutter banging (the one I should have been fixing instead of mast building) and that bug comes gnawing I can tell it that soon, soon we shall be sailing.