"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." -Tao Tzu

Or in our case...an unstep. Today we arrived in Gig Harbor a sailboat and left a motorboat. Pulling the mast will give us the opportunity to replace our chainplates, standing and running rigging, lighting, wiring, refurbish the furlers, etc., etc. Jeff and his cousin Scott went with and helped me, which was really nice.

After hooking up the crane, we went to work, removing all of the rigging. To our amazement, the crane was unable to lift up the mast, as it wouldn't budge off of the step. Only after heating it up with a torch, dousing it with PB Blaster, and hammering in wedges, were we able to slowly break the step's grip on the mast. It looked to me like the mast has never been removed!

The rigging and chainplates didn't look bad, but sometimes they don't, even when approaching failure. We have major work cut out for us, but this project certainly needed to be done for peace of mind. Wish us luck!!