It's been a wet and cool spring up here in the NE, but First Light is back in the water with her new standing rigging and a couple of day sails under our belt. All appears to be well with the new stays/shrouds incorporating Hi-Mod compression fittings from Catalina Direct. Other than accidently dropping the roller furling foil which press fit itself onto the forestay turnbuckle stem (covered in a recent post), things have gone relatively smoothly. It has consumed a bit more than the usual amount of time to tune the rig with almost everything being new. I would recommend the Hi-Mod approach to those interested in doing their own re-rig.

While the mast was out, we took advantage of inspecting and removing the starboard and port chain plates. We cleaned them up. Previously, I thought I had seen some cracks on some of them, but it turned out to be just some light surface rust. Catalina used polysulfide caulk as a chainplate sealant on our boat. It held up well over the past 17 years and no moisture or core softening was found in any of the thru-holes. We cleaned the up all the holes and sealed the deck core with epoxy prior to re-bedding the chain plates with poly sulfide caulk. This is a two person job and I'm guessing it took us 6-8 hours of effort. Four of the chain plates contain rods that pass through a wooden block and a piece of aluminum angle extrusion prior to being bolted to the internal hull liner. The bolts are accessible with a deep socket wrench, but most are blind to work with and created some frustration during reassembly. If you can  glue the wood and aluminum backing plates in place prior to chain plate removal, it will greatly help reassembly. The working spaces have room for one hand, and blindly positioning the wooden block, aluminum angle, a lock washer and a nut requires a lot of dexterity. 

I sealed the myriad of holes in the masthead casting and used duct tape to seal the mast to the cabin collar casting, and this has dramatically reduced the amount of rain water in the bilge.

Lastly, I replaced the mainsail in-mast furling lines with the size specified by Catalina. After the line replacement, the mainsail was a bear to pull  out or furl. Adjusting the boom angle, halyard tension and sail tension when furling had no effect. I determined the new line on the furling spool was rubbing slightly against the two adjacent guide rods. The fix was to spray the furling line (when wrapped on the furler), and the guide rods with McLube SailKote.  The system now works like a dream....better than ever !!  Strongly suggest this fix to others who have tried all the other adjustments with limited results. This is a dry, colorless lubricant.