Critters in your Mast

Desiree has four very nice spars. The mast, gaff and boom are all Sitka Spruce.  The bowsprit is Douglas Fir.  The mast is built as a barrel: long staves of spruce around an empty core. Up through the middle, the wires for lights and VHF are threaded.

These spars sat for 15 years in a back yard. While they were on supports and covered, the holes in the top and bottom of the mast were not. You guessed it. Some critter or critters made there home there.

Cracks in upper mast

I first realized it when we put the mast on some sawhorses to begin it's reconditioning. At that point, my biggest concern was some splitting at a seam at the top of the mast and a small, punky area of wood nearby (see photo at right). However, as I rolled the mast over to check other seams, I could hear acorns and stuff rolling around inside. It sounded like the cage the caller uses to mix up the numbers at a bingo game.

So, while the cracks still have my undivided attention, I was curious about how much stuff was inside the mast, and how to get it out.

Andrew performing a mast enema

Andrew Haley runs our boat yard and if there's anything about boats he doesn't know, it ain't worth knowing. Our first solution was to hoist the mast on the boom truck and use gravity to drop the acorns out.

This didn't work.

Plan B was to snake a batten up the hole and that met with more success, but was limited to the length of the batten which was nowhere near the 36 feet of the mast.

Plan C was to use a plumbing snake. Again, some success but length was still a problem.

Acorns, fur, rope and other shhh. . . stuff. 

What was amusing was the amount of stuff that came out: acorns, acorn dust, fur, rope and all kinds of detritus. And it kept coming, and coming, and coming.


When we were done, we had a pile of critter detritus on the ground and still had stuff in the mast.

Why do critters chew wires? really.

Some of the seams need attention too so Plan D is probably to remove sections of a stave (or staves) and rout out any more crap in the mast, I will remove the wires as well. I was going to replace the wires anyway, but there is no question now. For reasons that defy logic, critters like to gnaw on wires (see photo) and these appear to have been the central dish at their thanksgiving day feast.



So, the old lesson learned is to close off any openings when putting boats up for the winter.  Failure to do so may result in small, furry stowaways that will always cause problems - the size of which are inversely proportional to the stowaways themselves.