Hurry up and wait

Well the mast is finally all ready to go back up. Finally! Unfortunately because of the holidays, I have to wait for another week before the crane driver comes to put it back up. I spent a huge amount of time, futzing around with the light at the top of the mast.

The photo shows the new VHF antenna on the right and the base of my masthead light on the left. I started out with an old Guest mast light that I wanted to modernize. I liked it because it had a strobe light on it which are technically illegal as a navigation light unless being used as a distress signal. I ordered a couple of high tech Bebi lights from Fiji and a SuperBright LED so altogether it has 4 lights in it. Strobe, Tricolor, and 2 anchor lights. So hopefully I will have a very bright light to discourage ocean liners from mowing me down in the middle of the ocean. The trouble is, the copper clips on my masthead base kept breaking off because they were so old so I ended up creating new plugs for the connectors. Lots of fun!

As well as replacing all the standing rigging, I also replaced the running rigging so in the photo you can see the 3 halyards I ordered from Bud Taplin. 

It looks like spaghetti with all the wires and ropes but each has a critical part to play. The 2 pieces of teak are my pinrail used for storing my sheets which actually have my old lower stays on them. Ok so this is the plan. Because I wasn't sure how long to order the stainless steel stays, I ordered them without fittings on one end and here is a photo of one of the Norseman fittings that get fitted to the end of the stay once I know how long it needs to be.

The mast will go back up and be held in place by the 4 lower stays and once I have fitted the 5 other stays in place, I will then replace the 4 lower stays. The climb up the mast to the spreaders is not that high to replace the lower stays so even though it is a big no-no to climb the mast while the boat is on the hard I feel fairly safe doing it. Besides, there is no hurry to do this and I could probably wait until the boat is in the water. My long term plan is to come back down for 2 weeks in April to finish off any other projects, like the caprails and the motor mounts. Then in August, put her in the water and go sailing for a few days, hopefully putting her through her paces and finding out more stuff I have to do. I will pull her back out into the yard and after I retire in December, start work on her in earnest, like installing all the electronics. 

One other project I worked on was replacing the piping above the water tanks. Fairly straight forward once the home depot guy found all the parts for me.

Unfortunately I discovered  the top one in the photo, has a serious leak in it so I have to get a new one and will probably go ahead and replace both of them while I am at it. They are $175 each but the shipping will be an issue I fear. More dough ray me.

Finally I headed to Wally World to try and pick out a smoke detector. Now don't plan on being in any hurry if you ever go and pick out one. Back in the day, that is all you could get but now they are about 20 different types to try and bamboozle you. OK maybe not that many but still. I am one of those types who can't see the wood for the trees and decisions are not my strong suit. Do you buy a name brand or generic? Do I want a small profile one? What about voltage? Battery, connected or stand alone 120 volts? Smoke, fire, CO or gas. You get the point. I picked out a battery operated CO, smoke and fire. The gas one will have wait.

And one more thing, it doesn't stop once you have picked out the kind you want. Then you have to go home and study the voluminous instructions to decide where it needs to be located. I chose a spot near the galley. Phew!