Once the mast had come down to deal with the wiring issues, Jeff the yard manager at Delta wandered over to where I was standing and said, “so you’re going to paint that, right?” Up until that moment, I hadn’t even considered it. Sure it was chalky, but it was mostly holding together. My list was long enough, and I didn’t want to add this overwhelming task to it. I had never painted mental, never really used any boat paint what-so-ever. So when I told him that I doubted it, and I couldn’t see the benefits of it, he just looked at me, and said “Really? Are you sure?” Hence I painted the spar.
Since it was down for the re-wire anyway, might as well paint the bloody thing. It’s Interlux bright sides white. I’m rolling it on in about the worst conditions it can handle, it’s 45 degrees and raining cats and dogs. The wiring went fine though and there is a new anchor light, new spreader lights, a spinnaker bail, new vhf antenna, and a new steaming/foredeck light. I even had the chance to put the turning blocks in for the last jacks, that had just been thrown over the spreaders. I left a complete circuit to the masthead as well, that’s the turn of grey shielded cable there.
