Our Mast Rocks

With the mast down we have been slaving on the boat.

Weeks of work and the compression post is finally finished! There was a subtle problem with how the boat was orginally built and over the past 32 years things started to compress. The mast applies a downward force on the deck that is blanced by a compression post below (shown in brown). Unfortunately our compression post (strong teak) was mounted on top of a plywood sub-floor and ceiling (shown in light blue). The plywood compressed slightly over time and shifting the post.

I no likey. Here's how it was built with the orignal on top and new-improved construction on the bottom:

Step 6,039 was to pull off the compression post, table, wiring, molding, and just about everything that looked nice.

Anyway, step 10,104 was to cut out the compressed ceiling and fiberglass it. I should mention I no likey fiberglassing overhead. This foto shows the area that needs to be cut out and glassed.

This photo shows the sub-floor that needs to be replaced with something stronger. Purple heart was the wood I used as it is hard as concrete.

Our compression post isn't right under the mast, which is a bit odd. Due to the inside structures we couldn't move the post to the center, so I distributed the force using a 1/4" thick peice of stainless steel...very heavy duty.

In this photo, step 12,600, you can see the new (purple) sub-floor under the compression post. I haven't cleaned up the area yet, but things are coming together.

After building some new molding that fit flush to everything and reinstalling most of it. Step 14,212 was to take a photo of the almost finished work.

Now we just need about 50 teak plugs and our table back to finish this project. We decided to cut our table to a more narrow size and rip off the tacky formica. We have an artist working on a cool painting for our table top! It's going to look so fantastic!