Maineiac wrote:
Now we're wobbling on blowing this clambake by mid-October. It's tough. Garhauer is shipping the traveler today. But we just put the house and back 40 up for sale and have to drop everything and do clean-up, touch up and fix up for a few days. Nah. I'm out of here in October. Just have to work 24/7.
Deck should fall back into place fairly quickly. Cleats, winches, bow roller and various and sundries where I drilled out and filled all the holes.
When we stepped the mast, the starboard aft chainplate groaned when I tightened it. And the port forward chainplate - where I didn't fully repair what looks like a crash jibe crack about 2" long gong outboard - opened up. Sonofabitch to get the mast into center column. Port plates are totally cranked, STBD slacked way off.
OH and Rigrite is sending me the material for mast wedge - the 2' x 2" with 1/4" lip rubber stuff. FRIGGIN' $259.00!!! Hall Spars is no longer, and Holiday's $12.00/piece did nothing but piss off the Rigrite guy. (I forwarded the photos from here, 2014). The replacement piece comes from Kenyon Spars. It's on the Rigrite website. Frankly, that's probably the last I do business with Rigrite. What an abjectly outrageous price, but the yard asked that I not use Spartite. So I comply.
You do not want Spartite on a T37. Trust me--been there done that. Sorry that Hall does not sell that neoprene stuff I got a few years ago to replace the Spartite. I think they charged me $26--maybe that is why they went out of business. You really do not need much in there if you use a mast boot with some giant clamps and put a canvas cover to protect that. With some silicone in the track, it has to be a storm that puts water in to the masthead sheaves to get any below. There has to be some industrial neoprene extrusion that could be used for wedge material. I was thinking that you could just wrap some of that rubber baseboard a few times to stop it from clanking against the partners. Many boats just use wooden wedges to center the mast for tuning and you do not care if they fall out. The problem with the T37 would be the metal on metal clanking- when the mast pumps or flexes-but there is nothing magic about the process. No matter what your rigger is telling you. My other boat is a racing Folkboat and tuning is an art that I am at the intermediate level of performance at this point. I am clearly never going to live long enough to become and expert.