Story: Stepping the Mast

When my partner bought the boat at auction, the rigging was all bundled up and laid flat on top of the boat. For all my imaginary readers who are non-sailors, the rigging consists of the mast, spars, lines, stays, and everything else that is used to hold and maneuver the sails. I'd never thought about how that stuff was put up. But, I trusted that my experienced partner, knew what to do. As it turns out, most sailors, do not know how to step, or unstep, a mast.

When we decided to rig the boat, it was still moored at the state park. This park was about a 45 minute drive from our house and lacked any stores etc... Therefore, we needed to get it done in one fell swoop since it was so inconvenient to go to the boat.

The mast probably weighed 75-100lbs and was about 26 feet long. Our first approach was to place the bottom of the mast in the step, and then try to push it up, but it was too heavy and long for us to get the leverage we needed. We tried this approach for quite a while with no luck; we were starting to get a little desperate. To this point, I'd said nothing, but I decided to start offering my own idea. My idea was for one person to float the boat under the dock bridge while the other held the mast over the side of the bridge. We would lower the mast onto the boat and the person in the boat could get things squared away.

There were two problems. First, the mast was very hard to control for a single person, and second, the tide was coming in and we were quickly losing space under the bridge. To solve the first problem, I lashed the mast to the side of the bridge. It was a loose lashing, but it helped me hang on to the mast while my partner moved the boat. There was no solution to the second problem except to race against time.

We did barely get it done, but it was tough and awkward with a lot of scary moments in between. With the tide high, and the boat almost pressed against the bottom of the bridge, the mast remained unwieldy. But, in the end, we got the mast on.

I'm still not sure what would have been better.

I'll have to tell you about when another expert sailor helped me lower the mast.

Until then,

Happy sailing.
Woody