Capt Cleveland announces the final phase of Winter Maintenance with up-rigging of Spars to commence on February 24. Volunteer help urgent

Volunteers focus weekend efforts on coating spars and bending on mast hoops.

11 Volunteers ignored chilly temperatures Saturday to tackle two projects critical to completing Winter Maintenance on schedule;  lay on final coats of varnish and white paint on Spirit's gaff's and booms, bend on the 30 mast hoops that had been taken off for scraping/sanding then resealing and refinishing.

With Capt Cleveland setting out the priorities for the day, Volunteers  organized themselves into two teams.

Tony Marchesani, Darren Casale, and Ken Fonville
compress and secure a mast hoop onto the foremast.

 Darren Casale, Tony Marchesani, and Ken Fonville took  on the tasks of moving freshly oiled mast hoops from the dock, and staging them with each mast. After locating the fastening hardware, they began a slow, often frustrating task of bending and sliding each hoop, like a giant key ring, around a thick post without straining it to the breaking point.  Once the mast hoop was completely encircling the mast, volunteers pushed and pinched ever tighter, the rings until  all screw holes aligned enabling seven different screws to be forced through the the rings ans secured with nuts on the outside of the hoop.

Freshly varnished and painted spars cure
 in the cool afternoon.

Meanwhile, the larger Volunteer Group;  Danny Johnson,  Gary Pope, Carter Edwards, Pearson Chesney, Tim Geoghegan, and Dani Feerst, set up a coatings station of ground cloths, rags, spirits, varnish, white paint, and brushes.  Next they organized into pairs to tack down then apply another coat of Deks Olje D2 varnish to the Fore and Main Mast booms and gaffs, and various thumb cleats.
As both projects were kicking off, Danny Johnson introduced two new Volunteers he'd recruited , to Volunteer Coordinator, Bryan Oliver. Hopefully, the scene of apparently  barely controlled chaos of activity, wouldn't dissuade them from returning to pitch in on the next project. As of this writing, here's hoping we see Drea Bauer and John Whitsitt back on deck soon.
By lunch time, fourteen mast hoops had been reinstalled, and all four spars received another coat of varnish, flipped over, and white ends prepped for a coat of white paint .  Crew took a break and mustered below for a rich lunch of Hunter's Seafood Gumbo.  Fighting off a strong urge for siesta, crew mustered on deck for one last two hour surge to finish their projects.  By end of day, a total of twenty mast hoops had been reinstalled, and all four spars had received a coat of white gloss paint around jaws, shoes, and ends.

Crew wrestles the foresail off the cart after hauling it to Liberty Square
for lay-out and inspection.

As crew  secured tools and prepared to stand down, Capt Cleveland announced the objectives for the final phase of Winter Maintenance.  On 24 February, the crew and all available volunteers will rig the booms and gaffs for swaying back onto the ship.  Over the following days, Feb 24-29, all running rigging will be reinstalled, as well as the mainsail, foresail, and jib.
Volunteer effort didn't stop with Saturday.  Sunday morning, Layne Carver and a new Volunteer, Bruce Zimmerman drove all the way up from Hilton Head Island for the day,  to further advance the work, from the day before. By their departure after lunch Sunday, they had added more mast hoops and final coated remaining varnished surfaces.