Advice on repainting mast

I've been looking into having my mast, boom and spreaders repainted since the paint is bubbling and chipping. My two ballpark estimates so far are in the $3000 - $4000 range. But one alternative that was mentioned was to just strip it to bare metal and let it do its own thing over time. Does anyone have any thoughts on this or prior experience? I'm told that any repainting is temporary anyway.

Thanks

Paul
E29 "Bear"

Paint...

Trivia: When we were shopping for our first sail boat in the 70's, Catalina was offering anodizing as an option.
Most boats that I saw for sale did have this protection on their aluminum spars, though.
If you strip it to bare aluminum, it will oxidize and pit in the sea air.

If you strip it to bare metal, you could have those long extrusions re-anodized, but it would cost a bunch of $$.

Paint seems to last up to 20 years, IF applied right, and the hardware is reinstalled right, and you then take care not to carve thru the paint surface with pole ends and winch handles....

IMHO: If you use LPU paint, and faithfully follow all (!) the prep instructions, I bet you could do the job yourself. Several of my friends have done their own spars.

My .02, YMMV.

Loren

I'd really consider doing it yourself. Sand or strip depending on how bad the old is, and then look at using something like the Interlux Brightsides. Remember, most of the mast is too high in the air to get a good look at anyway, and before I spent that kind of money, I'd make sure all my sails, standing rigging, winches etc. were up to snuff - more sailing bang for the boat buck.

Mast Paint Repair - Cheapo Fix

The black paint on my mast was bubbled by corrosion in several places. So a year ago I scraped, wire brushed, treated (with kit from West Marine), brush primed with Zinc Chromate and brush painted with black Rustoleum. So far OK.

Painted spar vs. bare.

Paul, Loren brings up all good points and without really knowing about spars on other Ericsons, virtually the entire fleet of E31s were NOT anodized and a very small number of the early ones were delivered from the factory bare. The bare ones have oxidized over the years. Even my painted spars on hull #55 were not anodized and in addition, NOT shot with primer!! That said, it's darned hard to get paint to stick to anodize plating but for gosh sake, you'd a thought that they would have primed them first. It could do it yourself but it's a dirty, messy job and in June of 2006 I opted to have a rigger do it during the three weeks by boat was out of the water. I think the price for the mast, spreaders, boom and complete wire harness using tinned wire was more like in the $4,000-$5,000 range, really can't remember. All the above aluminum parts were stripped to bare metal using a combination of palm sander and paint stripper in the corners and weldments, sprayed with two coats of high-build filler, followed by two coats of primer and then two or three coats of LP with complete sanding between every coat. Dare I say that this recent finished paint job looks better than the spars might have when new? I handicapped, I was born without an email image attachment gene so I'd be glad to send you two examples back channel of an oxidized aluminum one and mine. Regards, Glyn Judson, E31 hull #55, Marina del Rey, CA glynjudsonatroadrunnerdotcom.