The Broken Mast #2

On April 24th, 2006 I broke our second mast at Lexington Reservoir after pulling the boat out of the lake.  Some low hanging overhead telephone wires got in the way and were loose from a storm.  For 10 years before this date the boat made it successfully under the telephone lines without any problems so I didnt even think to look.  I assumed the parking lot for the launch ramp was "safe" for masts, a mistake I wont make twice.

#1	#2	#3	#4
view from the bow	bent deck plate will need to be replaced	lucky there were no cars in the way	another angle
#5	#6	#7	#8
cracked the compression post	wooden shim, will be replaced with fiberglass	cracked foreward deck plate hole, bolt through the compression post	cracked port side deck plate hole

Rebuilding the Mast

With direction from my friend, I was able to rebuild the deck section of the mast.  I first had to cut off the gelcoat layer and then chissel out the wood, being careful not to puncture a hole through the fiberglass and gelcoat inside the cabin.  Next task was to fill in the hole with solid glass, a process that took almost 2 hours.  The fiberglass wedge that I made worked perfectly as a replacement for the original, rotten wood wedge that Schock used on the earlier C models.

#1	#2	#3	#4
Cutting open the top layer of glass	Cutting from a different angle	Removing the top layer of gelcoat and glass to reveal wood core	Wood core revealed. Need to remove

#5	#6	#7	#8
Chiseling out the wood	Cleaned up	Starting to lay glass	Almost finished glassing

#9	#10	#11	#12
Sanded and ready for new Gel Coat	Fiberglass Wedge and blocks need to be removed for gel coating	Close up of fiberglass wedge. Original wedge was made of wood.	The old wedge, made of wood.  Removed and replaced with wedge in #10 & #11

Back