At 8:00 am Saturday, July 9th, 2005, we started with a plain 1981 Catalina 22 swing keel sailboat. It was already hot and promised to be a scorcher. The first tool we broke out was the notebook and a pen, making a list of all the things we wanted to do before we started. The major tasks are: 1) Inside jib tracks, 2) Internal halyards and topping lift, 3) Internal out haul, 4) New jib winches with cross sheeting, 5) Gross/fine adjusting mainsheet and 6) Internal stiffening of the hull. We had done the bottom several years ago and have trailer sailed it since, so the bottom was in great condition.

After thinking about it for an hour or so and looking at the rigging on some other boats, we starting measuring and marking up the mast for the internal halyards. It was a lot easier to determine placement of the mast exit/entry holes and cleats with the mast actually on the boat. Using a Sharpie permanent marker, we drew the locations of the holes and cleats on the base of the mast and on the boom.

We dropped and removed the mast, mostly so we could move the boat under the trees and get out of the Texas sun, but also to make it easier to work on deck. It probably also made it easier to work on the mast. We found cotter pins instead of rings on the turnbuckles for the upper and aft lower spreaders. Those had probably been there forever, a scary thought.

It took a while to strip all the halyards, the current rigging was based on a Pearson 26 OD that I had sailed on back in the late 80'/early 90's. David called my boat "primitive". Oh well, we still would win the occasional series.

I had put all new control lines on when I bought the boat and rigged it for spinnaker. That was many years ago and the lines were all stiff and faded with exposure. Maybe they will make good spring lines or tie-downs, but their days as control lines were over!

It took us about an hour to strip the boat and remove the mast. The boat looked so alone and forlorn with all the rigging stripped off.

By then it was really hot and we wanted to be under the trees. We set up a work area in the shade and started stripping the old hardware off the mast. The first thing to go was the mast head light, the boats life as a cruiser had officially ended, from now on, it was a race boat.

The masthead light was a pain to get off, the electrical cable in the mast was cushioned by several pieces of foam, so the entire mast head assembly had to come off. This was going to happen any to run internal halyards, but it was still a pain.

Once we had all the old hardware off the mast, it was time to start drilling holes for the halyard entries and exits. We decided to not use angled entry hardware, we would just open a 2 inch long by 1/2 inch wide opening and file it down smooth. We broke out the 1/2" bit and the spring loaded center punch and started drilling. We found some excess weight we could get rid of, a birds nest! It took some time to set up, align and drill all the holes for the exits for the main halyard, jib halyard, spinnaker halyard, and topping lift. These holes should not compromise the integrity of the mast as the pressure is all compression (I hope!)

After drilling the rough holes, we used a Dremel tool to cut through the remaining metal and to do some rough trimming. We learned that there are really no suitable heads for the Dremel that work well with aluminum as it is so soft it clogs up the grinding stones. Needless to say, this didn't go as fast as we had hoped it would, especially when you take into account the trip to Home Depot to try to buy more heads for the Dremel. Of course, they didn't stock the head that had been the most effective. So, we didn't complete this task. Hopefully I will be able to find those heads elsewhere this week and we can get those openings done next weekend. After a water break, we decided to move onto installing the new inside jib tracks.

For years I had gotten grief for not having inside jib tracks. Apparently this is a huge thing? Ok, I was getting tired of other boats pointing higher than me, but we still managed to win some races. But now it is time. I bought a couple of 8 foot by 1 inch T-track from West Marine. We cut the first piece in half to use for the genoa track. We measured 115 inches from the front of the stem fitting and 1/2 inch out from the deckhouse, marked the holes and started drilling. It was very hard to drill the first hole, but by the 20th hole, it was a breeze. The track is attached to the deck using #18 Stainless 2"x1/4" screws backed by 1-1/4 inch fender washers and nylock nylon locking nuts. We were careful to not over tighten the nuts, we didn't want to compress the deck. We used 3M 4200 to seal all the holes, making sure to get plenty in the threads of the screws.

By now, we were wiped out from the heat. It was late afternoon, time to clean up and head to Aphaia for a swim and a cold drink.