Mast Beam Reinforcement

At the 2007 Maintenance Seminar, with a good deal of help from Mike Lehman, I re-did my mast beam. Unfortunately I don't have pix of the old reinforcement, and I don't have pix of what the beam looked like after we removed the old reinforcement. But the main thing is I only had one aluminum plate (on the aft side) which was clearly not sufficiently strong to carry the load because the beam had sagged to the point where I could not close the hanging locker door anymore. So I realized that I needed to reinforce the beam with the 'official' fix which is to have 2 aluminum plates sistered on either side of the original beam and through-bolted. I had these plates made at a machine shop up in Baltimore. I think they were about $400 or so. Mike and I drilled holes in them, etched them with acid, epoxied them to the original beam, and through-bolted the whole mess. We did this after loosening the rig and jacking the main beam back up into position.

Mike was hugely instrumental in completing this project. It was a HUGE job, much bigger than I had anticipated. Without Mike's help I never would have got this done. One funny story is that just before we were going to etch the plates, Mike dropped one in the water and I had to go swimming to retrieve it. Only afterwards did he tell me that they had a water treatment facility overflow into their creek last year. No wonder the bottom was so soft and slimy... ;-)

Here are some pix of the results:
Looking forward at the main beam in the head. You can see the teak vertical support that Mike added to carry additional load.
Looking aft at the port side of the forward beam in the forward compartment.
Looking aft at the starboard side of the beam in the forward compartment.
A close-up of the aft side of the beam in the head, looking forward.