Chip & Debbie Willis on s\v Elegant'sea: Mast work and lots of it! - Part 2

2011 - Marina Cortez San Diego, CA

Still needs some sanding\scraping.

The head was chipped and dirty and a few spots had bubbled paint. We also wanted to seal up any holes and that needed to be cleaned.
We started off on Sunday with some rain but it went away as the day went on. Debbie and I went to Driscolls Boat Works and dug into more mast work. We scrapped and sanded the areas at the head and foot of the mast that were in need of paint. The foot had an area about 2” from the base where there was a little white powdery stuff on the aluminum and some paint bubbled.

Our equipment

Before painting we wanted to install a pad eye for hooking to while standing at the top of the mast.

Locating the right spot for the pad eye.

Here is the decided upon spot.

Center punch the holes.

Same drill as the mast steps (pun intended).

Drill the holes.

I was talking to Debbie and not paying attention and screwed up a hole.

I had hit the center punch off a bit and so re-did the punch. The drill bit will sit in the dent the punch makes.

I put the drill bit in the wrong punch dent and drilled.

It was off enough to make it unusable. Luckily I was able to drill some more over and re-tap the hole and make it work. oops.

Tap the holes.

I was too chicken to use the tap in the drill. Hand tapping you can feel the tap do it's work and if there is a problem you can quickly stop. Not so with the tap in the drill. For more experienced pros the drilling the tap in would be faster. This is just too important and time sensitive to mess around.