Mast Winch Corrosion...

The more I learn about sailboats, the less I seem to know. I have made many rookie mistakes and I chalk this up as one. When i bought "Dayspring", I was looking at a few things. The rigging looked good and the chainplates had been upgraded. The boat had not been carved up for various modifications, it had a compression post installed etc. The biggy that I checked, but didn't have the experience to recognize was the keel bolts...that is a previous story.

This is simply an oversight on my part, a potentially critical one though. When I looked the boat over, I didn't look closely at the main halyard winch. This was partly because it had been under the sail cover and later, because I just didn't know you could get corrosion like this under the edge of the winch pedestal. Noticed it later and had me a little concerned. I had sailed it pretty hard and nothing had failed, so it was just on my to do list. I would have had it off immediately, but some idiot had bolted the thing on with a mild steel bolt. This not only rendered the winch unable to accept a winch handle, but after the bolt had blossomed into a mushroom of rust, made it impossible to remove from the mast.

Resolved to cut it off with a Sawz All. This made short work of it and allowed the removal of my new bronze paper weight. The corrosion is bad, hopefully when I take the mast in to fix the mess left by improper installation of the spinnaker track, this area can be reinforced as well.


Unbelievable how short sighted people can be sometimes.