There were several items on my "general maintenance" list that I wanted to address for the Bahamas trip, and they needed to be addressed anyway. First, the mast was in really bad shape from an oxidation perspective (
more photos here). So, I stripped it down to bare metal, primed it with an epoxy, metal primer, and then gave it a couple of coats of black enamel. Along the way, I discovered that a couple of the rivets attaching the spreaders to the mast were missing! The transformation was amazing! The boom and cross beams could also benefit from this attention, but they are not looking as bad. So, they are lower on my list of things to work on.
As part of the mast project I checked out all of the standing rigging thoroughly, and that is good for several more seasons. I also replaced all of the halyards. There are four halyards on Ama Mama including mainsail, jib, screacher, and spinnaker.
The last item on my general maintenance list was adding a gasket to the bow locker to hopefully keep it a little drier inside when we take water over the bow.
PLEASE NOTE - PICTURES WILL BE ADDED TO THIS POST IN THE FUTURE. SO, COME BACK IF YOU ARE INTERESTED TO SEE MY SET-UP.
