The Resourceful Sailor: Stepping a Small Sailboat Mast Using a Tripod

Article, photos and video by Joshua Wheeler

Naturally, the Resourceful Sailor said yes when asked about helping step the mast of Murrelet, a 2019, home-built, 19-foot Spitzgatter, using her purpose-built tripod (also called a gyn). Murrelet would be on a trailer at Port Townsend’s Boat Haven Marina boat ramp parking lot and ready for launch at the next high tide. Bertram Levy, Murrelet’s builder, had hauled her out just five days earlier for yearly topsides and antifouling work. It’s best not to keep wooden boats out of the water for very long.

If you built a 19-foot, deep-keeled, wooden sailboat (and not your first nor biggest), it’s nothing to make a proper-sized tripod for stepping and unstepping its mast. Easy to store in the boat shop’s rafters and easy to use. It consisted of three legs, made of two-by-three-inch lumber about 18 feet long, bolted together at one end through stainless steel straps riveted in place. The bolt included a U-shaped bracket that the fixed block of a two-part tackle, also called a gun tackle, would hang from. A tuft of carpet was added to the peak to protect the mast’s varnish. The tripod feet were tapered, each sandwiched by stainless straps, and brought close together for pinning to Murrelet’s stay chainplates and headstay fitting.

“The trick is knowing the balance point of the mast,” says Bertram about determining the perfect height of the tripod, explaining there may be some trial and error. “The legs were made a bit too short at first, and extensions had to be scarfed in.”