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Rigger climbing the mast to connect the strap to hoist the mast out

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For a 37 foot boat, the 376 has a pretty big stick! She came out cleanly though and is seen here just being carefully laid down...

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We then set about pulling the step off as there was quite a bit of corrosive build up between the stainless deck-plate and the alloy step which the rigger wanted us to check out. I have some photos here as they show how it is all put together.

There was quite a lot of corrosion (unsurprisingly) between the stainless deck plate and the allow step so I want to make sure this goes back in as new. The screws were really stubborn but they came out OK with a bit of bashing and force. It was good to see under the alloy step and to clean it up.

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The stainless deck-plate actually sits on top of (and is part of) the compression post, so to get it off the deck (which I wanted to do for no particular reason other than to make sure this whole thing goes back in at least as good as new), we pulled the entire compression post out of the boat through the hole in the deck (did not photo doing this as had my hands full of the really heavy stainless post!). It was pretty easy and will now allow us to reset the whole lot nicely.

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This photo shows the deck under the stainless deck plate after I have spent about 3 hours removing some seriously strong 3M material. Wow, that is tenacious stuff!

We plan to use a sheet of mylar between the stainless deck-plate and the alloy mast step (which was still structurally in great shape - phew!) as well as a lot of that yellow goo stuff to stop electrolysis.

It was an interesting day. These boats are well put together; the compression post was serious grade stainless and, needless to say, was really heavy! I also like the idea of the deck not being integral to the compression system.