Mast Stepping

We were scheduled to have the mast stepped at 8am. The rain and high winds had moved out and it was a perfect day.

However ... problems ensued. When the Mast Crane operator started to lift the mast, there was a loud bang and the lower port spreader broke off the mast. A picture of the broken cast spreader bracket is above. Not sure how this happened. When the mast was being lifted, one of the shrouds snagged the mast dolly and it's possible that put pressure on the spreader and caused it to break; or someone may have bumped the end of the spreader overnight, and caused the problem. Sometimes these things happen in marinas. In any event, we aborted the lift.

Fortunately, and this is a miracle, there was a mast from another Dufour 34 in the yard that had been damaged in shipment to Canada. We were able to remove the fitting from this mast, and after a mad scramble to find a rivet tool large enough to fit the rivets to secure the fitting, we were back in business. Mast up, rigging tuned and sails fitted. Wow ... what a couple of days.

Thanks Rob Wagner for all of your help. We never could have done this without you.