Dismasted

The pros at SeaTek Mexico in the La Cruz Shipyard successfully removed Roam’s mast. They’ll be disassembling it, inspecting all of the components, and replacing the standing rigging along with some of the other fittings.

The insurance company required new standing rigging. This is common and usually done every eight to ten years. Roam’s standing rigging is probably 14 years old. It’s not a bad practice. A 22-ton boat puts a lot of strain on its rigging. Monohulls tend to heel in the gusts which helps to spill the wind and dissipate some of its energy. Cats don’t heel. Instead, they accelerate and thus the rigging is subjected to a lot of stress.

While we could have replaced the standing rigging without unstepping and removing the mast, we wanted to remove all the fittings from the mast and inspect them. And, we wanted to replace the old radar, lights, wiring, and antennas. This seemed like a good time to do it.

Peter Vargas runs SeaTek Mexico and is a world-class rigger with decades of experience ranging from America’s Cup to world cruising boats. I was impressed with him and his team as well as the team at the La Cruz Shipyard.

The new rigging is being fabricated in San Diego and will be shipped down to La Cruz for Peter and his crew to install.

We also used this as an opportunity to remove the working sails from the boat and have Mike at PV Sailing clean and inspect them. They are nearly new, but since the mast was coming the sails had to come off and it made sense to have him and his team go through them. The main needs a slight modification at the tack so it can be fully hoisted. It has stretched a bit (common) since it was first cut.

Getting new lights and electronics for the mast in Mexico can be challenging. We decided to buy most of the gear we need from PV Sailing thus avoiding US state sales tax. We’ll have everything shipped to our Mexican import agent in San Diego and he’ll get everything through Mexican customs and down to La Cruz. The import duty and shipping will eat up whatever we saved in US sales tax, but it will get there. “Paperman” Juan Arias is our import agent and he also handled getting our Mexican Temporary Import Permit (TIP) for the boat when we bought it.

Peter hopes to have the rig ready to go by the end of June. That should coincide well with my work schedule and I’ll head back down to PV to oversee the work, hook up the mast wiring, and get started on upgrading our sailing instruments and electronics.

Click to enlarge