| As I was
writing this chapter on working and stepping masts I said to Allison,“You
know we have not stepped a mast in a long time and I don’t have
any good mast stepping photos.We need a mast stepping job”.
Just two days later we got a call on the SSB. An
Islander 37, two hundred miles out of French Polynesia headed
for Hawaii had just suffered a collapsed mast step. We talked
to the owner over the radio while they were still deciding what
to do about the problem. We explained that we could lift the mast
with our gaff boom and use our onboard welding to make a new mast
step. They liked the idea and three days later they arrived.
On the first day we lifted the mast using the gaff
boom, and laid it on deck. We found the old mast step to be completely
rotten. The tough strong steel had turned to rust and nastiness
over the last 25 years. All the old corroded metal was removed,
the area cleaned.
The second day a new mast step was built. At mid
afternoon on the third day we started raising the mast and thirty
minutes later the it was sitting on its new step. A very nice
piece of work. Three full days plus a bit of a third to tune the
mast and clean up. Everyone was happy and the boat sailed away
headed back for Hawaii.
All this work took place in the lee of Raiatea,
in the French Society Island chain where the water is calm water
and two boat yards reside in case we needed any special materials.
One of the boat yards has an office that over looked the whole
bay. The owner of the yard sat in his office all three days watching
the show.
After the stepping we found him waiting on shore
for us as we came in for our morning walk.
“What boat are you on” he asked.
“The black one” I said pointing.
“Oh, you are the one that did the mast work”.
Ah, I thought, here it comes, the boat yard owner
saw the job go off without a hitch. Now he wants to offer us a
job.
“Yes” I beamed “that went well, we got lucky and
everything fell into place”.
He stared at me with narrow eyes.
“You have to know you are FORBIDEN to work in this
port”.
“Well yes, but it was a pretty good job don’t you
think” I continued.
He cut me off.
“When I go to your country I have to get a face
scan and I can only stay for one month and I can’t work, so you
can not work here either” he flatly stated.
“Ok, I understand” I said, but still looking for
where to spend cyclone season I carried on “you run a yard here,
you must know how to get legal work papers; help me with that
and I’ll stay right here and work for you this coming season”.
That put the poor fellow over the edge. He took
a deep gasp, then let out one of those long French farting sounds
while he tilted his head back, blowing little droplets of spit
into the air.
“The only way you could work here is if you could
do a job that no Frenchman on the island could do, but since we
are French we can do anything you Americans can do, so we don’t
need you here!”
I realized our chances for a job were not too good.
We headed back out to our boat to study the charts and decided
to spend our cyclone season in New Zealand. |
