I'm not sure how this was all originally built, but it looks to me like the bolts were assembled with the nuts in place, then the whole assembly was packed with epoxy putty. The nuts were sealed inside the deck. That's actually okay for 20 years or so, but the 12 o'clock bolt wasn't packed too well, and the nut was in an air pocket. Gee. I wonder where that leak came from... To get the parts free, I had to grind into the deck with my Handy Dremel Tool.

Of course I'm in year 21 and it's time to rebuild the whole thing, so I had to grind out all 4 "nut" assemblies. Oh, nuts.

So I cleaned it all up, then we went and pulled the rig. Now I could Really go to work!

The 12 o'clock "bolt" had turned and turned and I had to drill the head off to release the collar. I thought it was stripped. Not so. The nut wasn't attached to anything.

Here's the old Mast Collar. It was cracked... just a small crack, and just on the edge.
But it weakened the place where
I want to connect the boom vang.
(I ended up doing something else
with the vang.)

Beside, the darn thing is old and ugly.

I pulled it up by attaching the main halyard to one side, and running it through a block on the other side,
and then winching it up. Silicone! Oh, no, Silicone!

Of course I removed the "bolts" before ripping it off the deck... There was a bolt at the top, bottom and sides (i.e. 12, 3, 6, and 9 o'clock). The rest of the fasteners were screws.

Using screws for deck hardware is like using a lace napkin at a pig roast.

Wow, here's the new mast collar. I should mention the month of preparation for this moment. The mast collar is, I'm told, the "Last of the Original Castings". Cool. I got it from South Shore.

When it arrived it looked like it had been sitting on the shelf for 20 years. It was primed gray and all scratched up.

I sanded it down to aluminum, primed with phosphoric acid, chromic acid and zinc chromate. Then I put six coats of 2 part Interlux Polyurethane on it.

I used my Handy Dremel Tool to grind a countersink around each hole. That way, I'll fill it with caulk and let the caulk cure for few weeks, then crank down on the bolts to compress the whole thing. The caulk will compress into the counter sunk holes and create the ultimate water tight seal.

Then I overdrilled the holes. The holes look lopsided because the new mast collar doesn't exactly match holes with the old...

I ground out the core as best I could using my Handy Dremel Tool with the router attachment to get under the edges. I wore out all my router bits on this job, because the core around the mast here is Plywood, not Balsa.

Then I packed the holes with epoxy putty thickened with colloidal silica. I covered the holes with wax paper and masking tape to create a dam for the putty. You can see a bit of wax paper still stuck to this repair.
I'll grind it off...

I now have solid epoxy that's 1.5 inches thick around the mast collar holes. Note the color of the epoxy. An Honest Moment: It got too hot when the epoxy kicked. It's a learning experience for me -- I don't know it all! Fortunately, with 12 bolts I'm comfortable that it's overengineered to compensate for any potential weakness. If I had to do it again, I'd build the epoxy up in layers.

Why Six coats? Because everything I paint ends up looking like the side of a barn, that's why! I finally decided that it really didn't have to be perfect, it just had to be respectable.

I'm going to use 12 each 5/16 bolts and bolt it all the way through the deck all around. It won't leak again, if I do it right, and it won't pull up.

I forgot to dry fit the mast collar. It was late, and I really wanted to get it done and go home. So there I was, with three tubes of Black LifeCaulk smeared in all the appropriate places, and I thought to myself,
"Oh Shucks! I forgot to dry fit..." (Yes, I say Shucks when talking to myself. Right.)

What are the odds of drilling 12 holes in the deck and having them all line up perfectly?
Whatever the odds are, I missed. Not by much, but by enough...

I spent 10 minutes trying to make it fit anyway. Then I admitted to myself that using the bolts to force the collar down was creating a problem, because it might never fit perfectly, which would create a leak eventually, and by jamming it in wrong I'd never be able to get it out again.

Then I considered trying to make the adjustments on the fly using power tools to take 1/16" off the edges of the offending holes. Right. Let's use a high rotation power tool inside a hole full of fresh black polysulfide caulk, right there on my white deck. I'm glad I had some sense left...

To remove Mass Quantities of polysulfide caulk, use a large plastic container and a gallon of mineral spirits. The mineral spirits somehow instantly cure the caulk, and disintegrate it at the same time. It was actually pretty easy to get all three tubes of caulk off the mast collar without damaging anything.

Wear gloves.

Next weekend I'll get it right!

Stay tuned!

Here's the view from inside. After the caulk is totally cured, I'll get a friend to help me crank down hard on the joint. Those 12 bolts inside the cabin will be covered with a nice teak trim. The 12 bolts will protrude through the teak, and be topped with an acorn nut (you can see the acorn nuts here...)

I finally added the teak trim in October 2002, but of course it turned into a little project on it's own... Here's that page.