Re: [Cal_Boats] Mast Up or Down(Chris C)

Chris, Our club steward can position the boat, direct the crew, tell everyone what to do when. Our members and customers have complete confidence in his ability. We are lucky to have him. Hell no, we don't pay him enough. We're a small club with a full time steward. He's such an asset that you can't believe. Because our mast stepping business is an important source of revenue for our club. David Dobbs, Cal29 411 --- On Thu, 4/30/09, Chris Campbell <cl… [at] charterinternet.com> wrote: From: Chris Campbell <cl… [at] charterinternet.com> Subject: Re: [Cal_Boats] Mast Up or Down(John Boyce) To: Ca… [at] yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 30, 2009, 9:21 AM Donald Dutton wrote: The crane operator at Morgan Marina estimated my mast at 800 pounds. The change in the waterline with and without the mast would tend to support his claim. The stick measures 51' and is keel stepped with the over water clearance at 50' meaning the step is about 1' below the waterline. This guy is one of the best who has ever hauled my mast, so, if you find yourself in New Jersey, and need a mast hauled or stepped, Morgan Marina is the place to go! My other boat has a deck-stepped wooden mast that's about 28 feet above deck level. The first year we owned the boat, when I was 21 and had a much newer body, we tried unstepping the mast by hand, just tilting it down on the big sturdy hinged step. How hard could that be? Why pay the marina all that money to do it? It was a fundamental misunderstanding of physics and how levers work. The thing got MUCH heavier as it came off of vertical toward the horizontal. I couldn't use my right shoulder for a month after I went back to college. I broke the glass globe on the masthead light and sliced my right hand with it. What a disaster, and an early lesson in why it's often worth paying to do something the better way. In those years, they had an old guy with a fondness for the bottle who ran an old crane, the kind with clutches and cables and drums. He liked to sample his bottle for breakfast and the crane was a balky old thing. But somehow it worked. And then the marina got new equipment and new operators, sober and professional, and the current guy can drop that mast down so the pivot pin on the step lines up just right. It's incredible. So I can recommend Bay Harbor Marina in Bay City, MI. Chris Campbell