The sun had yet to creep over the horizon and greet the sleepy seaside town of Newport when my cell phone/alarm clock began blaring music and vibrating next to my brain. Looking out the window onto the silent street below my apartment, I swear you could tell just by looking that it was going to be a cold day.
Is there anybody else working on their boat today, I wondered as I dragged myself into my car (waited for it to heat up) and began making my way to Mount Hope. I thought we would be gluing the four sides of the mast together today.
After chatting about our goals for the day, our breathe visible in the air, Jim told me that today’s project was to build the blocking for the mast. I learned that the mast would basically be hollow except for the three places (in my case) where it needs the most support, the bottom, about two-thirds of the way up where the spreaders are and the masthead (the top). It didn’t sound too difficult but I swear Jim can make launching the space shuttle seem as simple as tying your shoes . The blocking couldn’t just be drilled into their places, we would need to glue tracks to the inside of the mast for it to rest and be glued to. This meant another full round of measurements.
Also, building the precise blocking we needed required gluing four to six spare pieces of Spruce together.
Once we had the measurements we needed, I glued the Spruce boards together by applying West Epoxy to both faces and them clamped them together. Jim explained, the best way to clamp together something like this is to start with the corners, so they don’t slide on you, then add clamps every few inches around the perimeter. You’ll want to tighten a clamp on one side then tighten the clamp opposite just like if you were tightening the lug nuts on a tire.
Keep in mind that a lot of the glue you just put on will leak out the sides when you do this, essentially gluing the blocking to the bench you’re working on. Jim told me to just glue it up and not worry about gluing it to the bench. (He would later be telling me where he kept his spare heat gun and chisels.)
Finally prying my crucial mast supports from a stubborn bench, Jim introduced me to a machine known as the jointer. This large machine would rip the faces of the blocking and ensure that they had perfect 90-degree angles. As we cleaned off and set up the jointer, Jim shared one of his famous stories about how that same machine ripped the fingers from the hand of his high school classmate and how they were never seen again.
I decided to graciously let Jim handle the jointing, nice guy that I am. Once jointed up and sanded we drilled a hole in the blocking for the antennae and masthead light to pass through.
Recently I’ve been telling some locals sailors that I’ve met about the new mast project, which is typically met with rolled eyes, deep exhales and looks as though I’m crazy and there are times driving in the snow to work on a mast when I think they might be right. But if I didn’t have the opportunity to work alongside Jim on this project, I would never have known about the inner workings of a mast and why things like blocking are important. Not knowing any of that is what sounds crazy to me.
Boy and a Boat 