2d Saturday of the Year; Crew refocuses on overdue maintenance priorities.

 Saturday's Volunteer Day provided an opportunity to return to a familiar combination of ship's maintenance and building/refreshing deckhand skills.   Walter Barker brought along a new volunteer prospect, Bree, along with a most welcome casserole for lunch. 

Nate Mack working under the
 Mainmast boot looking for the leak

 Alex Laya, and Nate Mack took on the sleuthing of searching for source of the rain leaking around the mainmast into the saloon. The work entailed first creating pools of water around the base of the main mast, to identify the source of the leak

Alex Laya contorted around the mainmast
 boot cleaning grime off the top seal.

Next,  remove the lashings securing the  heavily painted  canvas mast boot, and lifting the  bottom up and away from the base of the mast and its wedges. ..and then searching for wet areas that might indicate leaks. 

While some deterioration of the canvas rim fastened at top of the mast would all small amount of water in, it didn't seem to cause the amount filling down into the saloon. The most proximate cause concluded was a separation between the mastboot ring, and the teak deck.   Nat and Alex made decision to tackle both.  Cleaning the grime off areas surrounding both top and bottom canvas boot seals, they dried it, and sought out the promised canisters of Teak Deck caulk. To Bryan's chagrin, all four cans purchased just over two years ago, had cured inside the canister and were hard and useless.  Fine print on canister mentioned a shelf-life of 18 months.  We were six months beyond it. For now an order thru Amazon would have to make up for lack of stock of any chandlery's in town.                       

Lexi Fine on the Foresail gaff
 unshackling the throat halyard

Returning volunteer Lexi Fine, and Rick Washington helped Bryan Oliver rig up bosun's chairs on the fore and mainmast in anticipation of laying aloft to sand/slush masts if the wind would die down.  

As they waited for that, the same trio teamed up to clear more rigging hardware out of the forecastle berths, and move them into the Lazarette. 

Wayne Burdick came aboard and took over the project of drilling out and reseating the strut of a bent bronze stanchion on the starboard cap rail.

Wayne measuring out new drill
 holes for the stanchion strut.

Dave Brennen adjusting steering
 in Capt Davis's Pushboat.

Dave Brennan assisted Capt Davis in bringing his skiff around to the side, and trouble-shoot some engine issues. 

Lexi Fine and Rick Washington on the head rig,
 tightening the jumbo lashing.

After a lunch of Walter's southwest style casserole, Rick, New Volunteer, Bree, and Lexi walked the deck with Bryan to practice their line handling and coiling skills on the pin rails.  As the last task of that session, Lexi and Rick lay out on the bowsprit to take slack out of the jumbo downhaul, running it back through the entire daisy chain, securing it at the jumbo's clew.

Captain Davis and Alex Laya, finishing up the day.

At end of the day, gusty winds prevented going alot,, reserving that project for the next session. Passed expiration dates and dried out caulking canisters prevented the sealing around baseplate of the mainmast, setting it up also for a subsequent volunteer day project. sooner than later,