Mast Base repair

This weeks project was dealing with the old wiring thru hull at the base of the mast.  

This area has been a problem for years because the the fittings were old and a proper repair is difficult.  A proper repair involves dropping the mast which wasn't realistic for us these days.  Anyway we tried a variety of duct tape and other "super temporary" solutions but obviously nothing worked properly. Since we don't have the means to deal with the full repair now we needed to find a reasonable repair solution until it can be dealt with properly.

​We started out by cutting out the bad stuff.  The old through hulls for the wiring weren't doing their job anymore so out they came.

Next was cutting out the bad steel. We were right over the galley so out came the plastic drop cloths and we went to work.  We used a sawzall, jigsaw, a grinder and a variety of other small tools.  It made a pretty big mess but thankfully most of it was contained in the drop cloths.  :-)

​After that it was time to prep the topsides.  We wanted to weld in some new plate so we needed to get down to bare steel.  A grinder with a flapper wheel did the trick with the shop-vac catching all the debris so it didn't make too much of a mess.  We cut some patch plates from some spare steel we had and soon most of the prep was done.  

One complication we had was that we didn't want to weld directly to the the mast step.  First it was stainless steel and the deck was regular carbon steel and next this was never intended to be welded to the boat.  We decided not to weld this joint and just fill it with polysulphide.  That way we would have a waterproof but flexible joint that we could take a part later..

Next we started welding in the plates.  As we were just getting set up we didn't immediately realize we had run out of welding gas.   Things didn't go so well at first.  A bit of cursing and head scratching ensued.  Once I figured out the problem I switched over to flux core wire and everything worked fine. 

 Once the plates were welded we sealed everything up with 2 part epoxy and some sand-able filler.  This helps protect the steel and will let us smooth out the weld without grinding it down.  We sealed the last seam with polysulphide and left everything to dry and cure properly. We will be repainting the entire boat later this winter so this is where the project ends..  (for now....)

Find Welder from Harbor Freight - here
Find Polysuphide - here
​Find 2 Part Epoxy at Tap Plastics - here