Painting the Masts from the Bosun’s Chair

We have many projects to write about. The majority from the fall of 2019 until now and I don’t know where to start with it all.  Therefore I think I’ll start with the present work of painting Mahdee’s wooden masts.  Both are the original masts she came with way back in 1931.  The mainmast is fir and has an impressive bird’s mouth scarf that starts about 8 feet from the top which is likely related to the mast extension that was done when the second owner (1937-1943) removed her sliding gunter to leave her with a simple Marconi style mainsail.   Her foremast is sturdy Sitka spruce. I painted the masts when they were conveniently horizontal on sawhorses at ground level when we were relaunching Mahdee in the spring of 2009.

I used Kush marine paint and we have generally been very happy with it.  The mast hoops did eventually wear through the paint of the foremast a couple years ago and using the windlass I hoisted David up in the Bosun’s chair to cover the bare wood with varnish.  David really didn’t want to pull the masts for my painting and kept procrastinating the job of actually pulling them so I could paint but yet he really didn’t want to paint them himself. I will only paint them safely on the ground. I thought we’d eventually find a nice time and a nice place to pull the masts so I could paint them while safely on the ground.  Alas, that just was not to be.  The DIY yards we have access to right now tend to not have a crane of the size needed nor the experience to pull such long masts for that matter.  And thus it came to pass that I talked David into painting them from the Bosun’s chair. Way up there. In the air.  He has no problems with the bosun’s chair at great heights, but David generally dislikes working with paint and varnish so it is quite commendable that he undertook this big job.

Even though the Kush marine paint (an oil-based coating) has worked well, we decided that we are going to go to Allback linseed oil paint for the masts.  This is because we already use the Allback linseed oil wax in maintaining other painted surfaces on the boat and we like the idea of using linseed oil paint without solvents on the masts.  It is likely that we will be both waxing and painting the foremast — because of hoop wear– more often but we hope it is worth it for us to use this linseed oil-based system.

This mast painting ultimately took more than 6 weekends — a couple hours each time up the mast.  First was cleaning the spars as well as lightly sanding any edges of paint where it had worn away. The only real wear was on the front edges of the spreaders as well as on the front of the foremast in each area a mast hoop puts the shared load of the large foresail against the wood. Rub, rub, rub, it is surprising that there is any paint left in those bands on the mast.

On Mahdee’s masts, the spreaders and everything above the spreaders are painted white whereas the masts from the spreaders down to the gooseneck are painted a light golden brown.  From the gooseneck to the mast boot we have white enamel again. I’ve been able to keep up with painting the lower white but everything else was in need of David’s focus.  The mast hoops remain permanently on the foremast nested above the gooseneck so after David’s work aloft was complete, I secured the gaff boom above the hoop’s normal resting area and balanced the hoops on top of the gaff saddle to keep them out of my way while I did my own multi-day painting project.

After the clean and sand weekend, the next weekend David oiled the spars with a light coating of Boiled Linseed Oil (BLO).  That needed a few days to dry and so working weekend to weekend seemed to be good timing as well.  After the BLO came a coat of paint just on the bare spots and nowhere else.  The following weekend gave the first of 3 coats of paint.  Then weekend after weekend — in calm winds and in gusts 25-30 kts — David worked his magic from the seemingly uncomfortable perch aloft in the Bosun’s chair.  A couple of weekends saw only one mast getting done because it was just too windy.  But ultimately David worked his way through most of 3 liters of paint and tomorrow I put the last coat of paint on that lower section of the foremast so by this 4th of July holiday weekend our mast paint will be dry and complete.  We will have to wait a few weeks or months for the paint to be sufficiently hard to apply the first of several coats of linseed oil wax — but that part should be easier to do from the Bosun’s chair for sure.

The first coat was just applied to the bare or worn spots on the forecast:

The old paint had oxidized to a slightly pink hue. The new paint is nice and golden:

Sistership Magazine and Sailing Mahdee

Sistership Magazine is an international magazine; written by women for women on the water.  In June Sistership Magazine included my article about sailing Mahdee and this month, in a free November special issue, a reprint of the article is included.  I hope blog readers of Sailing Mahdee: Life Aboard a 1931 Schooner will also enjoy reading the article (page 76) in the free issue of Sistership Magazine online.

Schooner Mahdee

Traditional varnished woods, leathered mast hoops, and a mile of rigging grace Mahdee.

mountains from the deck of Schooner Mahdee

Great views of snowy mountaintops visible from the deck of the schooner Mahdee in Alaska.

Fry's Anchorage, Santa Cruz Island, Channel Islands CA

At Fry’s Anchorage, Santa Cruz Island, the Channel Islands of California.

Swedish Mainsail or Trysail?

We have a photo of Mahdee from a late 1950’s newspaper clipping.  In it, she is sailing downwind under staysail, reefed foresail, and Swedish mainsail. In the pic, according to the caption, she is passing near Gloucester, MA and will touch at Newport and make landfall at Hamilton on her way to the West Indies. A Swedish mainsail is different from the regular one in that its seams are vertical and its size is smaller — much like a winter sail or a sail permanently reefed. We wondered about the use on Mahdee of a Swedish mainsail in that picture until we sailed Mahdee for a bit over a year. Then we totally understood. Her fore-and-aft sail balance is such that it’s desired to frequently sail with the mainsail reefed. Only in the typically mild Southern California sailing have we been able to consistently use the mainsail without a double reef in place. Everywhere else, she’s reefed and I’m thinking about a smaller mainsail. A good part of this is because we sail short-handed: just David and me. With only two of us, we’re extremely cautious about getting too much sail area up and having to deal with it if the wind suddenly pipes up. If we take the jib down, as it is in the newspaper photo, we must take the reefed mainsail down as well in order to keep the helm balanced. A small sail set on the mainmast is the solution.

Mahdee with Swedish Mainsail

I put it on my list of things to buy for Mahdee: Swedish mainsail or a trysail. Back and forth my thoughts go with whether the choice should be one or the other. Right now, I’m leaning towards the trysail and I just happened to run across this lovely video of the Schooner Adventuress with her trysail in use. A perfect example of a trysail in other-than-storm-use! Now I just wonder where they had it fabricated…

Trysail in use aboard Schooner Adventuress

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